Little Things Mean a Lot
by Even a tango
Summary: Set immediately after Delia's accident. When Delia is taken home to Wales Patsy is left alone and heartbroken, but refuses to give up on her, although she remembers nothing of their life together. This story explores how they rebuild their friendship throughout Delia's recovery in a series of letters.
1. Chapter 1

AN: I started writing this just after the end of series 4, when Delia was newly injured and we didn't know the outcome yet, so it doesn't follow canon beyond that point. It's been on tumblr since then, so to those who have seen it there – no it isn't a new story (although I am editing and adding bits as I go), I just thought it was finally time to get an account on here! Also this is my first time using the site so if anything is skew-whiff/I accidentally breach site etiquette in any way I'm sorry, I'm still getting the hang of it! (please feel free to let me know and I'll do my best to put it right).

Oh also, it's in italics because that's how I'm differentiating the letters that aren't actually posted from those that are (as will become obvious as the story continues), I'm not just doing it to be annoying!

* * *

 _To my dearest Delia,_

 _I'm sorry if this is hard to read. I have just come back from the hospital and no matter how I try I can't keep my hands from shaking. I am in our flat, sitting on the blanket where only hours ago we were sharing the best day of my life, before it became the worst. I can't bring myself to tidy our picnic away, not just yet. Delia, I wish I had told you then that I love you with all my heart. I know you knew it (no that's wrong. I know you KNOW it somewhere inside, no matter how deep it's buried) but I wish I had told you anyway. I have always had to keep up a front, show a brave face to the world and never let myself be vulnerable. You broke through so much of that, but I wish I had been as brave as you were and thrown caution to the winds. I wish I had been the one to take your hand more often. I wish I had told you how the whole world seems to light up when you come into a room, how just your name on my lips (Delia, Delia,_ _ **Delia**_ _) makes them want to curve into a smile._

 _You are alive Delia and I am so very glad, but you are hurt. So hurt I'm afraid you may not ever return. If I am never more to you than a 'friend' you can't remember or the strange girl who sat at your bedside and wept about the dirt under your nails it won't change my heart one jot. I am still yours, for now and for always no matter what. When I first saw you there and held your hand in mine, for one brief moment I thought we had been given a reprieve. You were bruised and sore but already I could see what would happen next. I would visit you every day, and when you were well enough we'd go home to our flat. It seems rather foolish now, but in those few seconds before I knew (no one told me before I saw you, no one warned me what your 'bump' really meant) I made such plans. I was going to work hard all the hours I wasn't at your bedside (somehow I forgot all about Nonnatus for a while) so that when I carried you across the threshold you would see the home we dreamt of, right down to the geometric designs on the china. I was going to help you to the chair I had picked out in my mind just for you, and then I was going to go down on one knee and ask you to marry me._

 _Now don't give me that look (but oh how I wish you would, because then you would know me and I wouldn't just be imagining your face), I know. There isn't a place on earth where that could happen. But do you remember what you said to me last time I said those same words to you? (well I shall remember twice as hard for both of us so you don't have to). 'There must be, somewhere. And until we find it, we'll just have to dance together inside our heads'. Well who says we can't get married the same way?_

 _That's what I was thinking, as I held your hand and, as an excuse for the contact, mentioned the dirt still there from the road. When you asked if I was a nurse I thought you were teasing me, but then… oh Delia. Then I looked into your eyes and the love I always see shining back at me was replaced with polite confusion. It was the look that you (sweet, tender hearted darling that you are) would give a stranger. I know I am good at keeping up appearances, since I was a little girl I've learnt to tuck emotions neatly out of the way, dust off my brave face and keep hospital corners on my mind. Even so, I don't know how I didn't break down right at your bedside when the full extent of your injury hit me. I feel broken into a thousand fragments beneath the surface even now. Tomorrow you are to start for Wales and who knows when I will next see you? I will write you letters of course, (that at least your mother has allowed) and they will be cheerful and terribly proper - letters from the girl who you volunteered with from time to time, because your family will be the ones to read them to you. But how can you recognize me from letters that I won't even see myself in? You are the only person who has known all of me. You will get letters from Nurse Mount, and you will know someone in London thinks of you. But how will you know the rest? How will you know that Patsy's heart is breaking beneath each of those carefully penned lines?_

 _It's getting dark now, but I can't bring myself to move because as long as I am sitting here writing to you it doesn't have to be really true just yet. I can pretend you will read these words and it will all somehow be alright. This place was to be so filled with love and instead there are just the echoes of the sobs I can't keep inside. Do you know what makes me saddest right now? We never did get that dance. There is nothing in the world I want more in this moment than to be holding you, well and safe and happy in my arms while we move round this room together to the sound of our new record player (I feel I would spend the last penny I owned to get one, just to dance to it with you)._

 _I won't give up on you Delia, I promise. One day I will take your hand again and we will have our dance._

 _A foxtrot maybe, or a waltz. Even a tango._

 _All my love,_

 _Patsy_


	2. Chapter 2

Dear Delia,

Here in Poplar the sun is shining and it feels as though summer means to hang on forever. The cubs all miss you and send their regards (they feel they are far too manly and grown up to send love, but I think that's what they mean by it). You made the first aid session you ran so much fun I think they are all a little bit devoted to you now. There's a lad named Jack, one of our rare quieter ones amongst the rambunctious scamps. You spent a good fifteen minutes sitting with him after he fell and scraped the skin off his knee, distracting him by showing him how to properly wrap and tie a bandage (the poor little chap was rather fumble-fingered at first, but ever so determined) and telling him the sorts of gruesome accident ward stories that young boys love more than anything (I must admit I was a little worried you'd give him nightmares, but he lapped it up and begged for more, as I'm certain you knew he would).

Well anyway, today Jack's mother found me at the mother and baby clinic (I'm a midwife so when I'm not dashing around the city attending labouring women I am usually to be found at the community centre handing out rose hip syrup and weighing babies) and told me that ever since then Jack keeps talking about being 'an ambulance man' when he grows up. Apparently he has been driving her round the bend with practising his bandages. She said that yesterday she walked into the boys' bedroom and found that not only had the young rascal wrapped his baby brother up in the whole family's winter scarves, he had taken all his nice clean school socks and made bandages for the cat! He said its tail looked crooked! I know I shouldn't laugh, but really, just the thought of their poor old ginger moggy with Jacks school socks on is enough to make me crack up. I have given her a roll of real bandages to give to him with the instruction that he can use them for practice on his **own** leg, so long as he promises to roll them properly the way you showed him after each use so no one trips over them and finds they need bandages for real! I have also promised to have a word with Doctor Turner and see if he might have a chat with the boy about a career in medicine. You might just have started a young doctor or surgeon down his future path!

Trixie, Barbara and I are off to the firework display on Saturday. As I'm sure you know it will be November the 5th and the streets will be filled with the children's Guys and the smell of toffee and gunpowder. We are getting ready together but I shall be there as Akela with the cubs so I dare say the two of them will go their own way once the pack start getting their flints out. They are making a little bonfire of their own and baking potatoes in the cinders, which makes me rather nervous after their last foray into fire lighting! (I won't dwell on that incident too much here, I will simply say that it was that little fiasco that inspired me to have you come in and run the first aid session in the first place. We dealt primarily with how to treat burns. Enough said I think). I won't be the only grown up there thank goodness, but I must say I will miss the reassuring presence of you and your St John's ambulance uniform, keeping us all in check. And of course you would love the fireworks. Still, I shall simply have to write it all so vividly in my next letter you shall feel as though you were there without ever having to leave your bed or suffer cheerfully through a burnt on the outside, raw in the middle cub cooked potato!

Everyone here sends their love and wishes you a speedy recovery. The nuns have added you to their prayers and no matter where one stands along the religious path, one can't help but feel that with people like Sister Julienne and Sister Evangelina on your side suffering simply doesn't stand a chance. Sister Julienne is the kind of person I can imagine must organize heaven (I hope that isn't blasphemous to say!), she is truly good hearted but she knows how to get things done and attend to the practical needs of an imperfect world. And as for Sister Evangelina, well, I dare say even the black plague itself would quail under one of her stern looks! Of course Trixie and Barbara send special regards. They are the other midwives here at Nonnatus House and they are both very fond of you. I'm afraid I shall have to sign off now. I'm on call tonight and the phone has just started ringing. New babies will come when they want, whether we who attend them are ready or not.

I hope all is well with you and that the fresh Welsh air is helping you regain your strength.

Best regards,

Patsy Mount

... ... ...

Dear Miss Mount,

Thank you for your recent correspondence. Delia isn't yet well enough to write to you herself, but she asked that I send a few lines to let you know how much she enjoyed your letter. She still spends most of the time sleeping as the doctor has prescribed a sedative to help her get plenty of rest. I'm afraid much of the time she is awake she is rather sad but that is only to be expected after what happened. Her seizures continue, but I dare to hope they are a little less frequent now than they were. When I read your letter aloud to Delia this morning and reached the part about the cat wearing socks I heard my daughter laugh for the first time since her accident. It was a sound I feared I might never hear again, and for that I must thank you Miss Mount. I hope you might consider writing again as I do believe it would cheer Delia considerably.

Yours Sincerely

Mrs M Busby

... ... ...

 _My Dearest Deels,_

 _My heart leapt when Sister Julienne told me I had mail this morning. Logically I knew it was too soon for you to be up to writing, but for a moment, before I saw the unfamiliar handwriting on the envelope I couldn't help imagining that it would be from you, and that somehow the last few days would turn out to have been... exaggerated somehow. As if the drama of the accident and the rush to the hospital might have masked the fact that you'd just been in shock before, and now you were writing to tell me you were fine, really, and were coming home at once. I told myself I was being utterly ridiculous of course, but even so I couldn't help a brief sick, disappointed feeling at your mother's precise lettering that is so different from your own cheerful, looping scrawl._

 _Still, now I have swallowed that last bitter, foolish hope I am truly grateful for your mother's letter. I know she needn't have sent anything at all, and things must be so difficult there it must have been tempting not to. In fact I will confess (here at least, in this letter I will never send) that I hold onto those few precious details as fiercely as a drowning woman would hold on to a life raft. Somewhere out there you were listening to my words and they made you laugh. Even for just a second I made you happy and that small fact helps me keep pretending all is well._

 _But at the same time there are parts of the all too brief note that trouble me. She writes that you are sad and it kills me that I can't be there with you to take some of your sadness away. Do you lie there alone in your childhood bedroom and cry tears I cannot wipe away for you? Does your mother hold you like I would, all the hours in the day if you wanted them? Does she make your tea right? Does she know how to make a balm to soothe your bruises? Does she read to you and put flowers in your window to catch the morning sun?_

 _There is so much I want to tell you. A thousand times a day I think I must tell you about this or that little moment, that I can't wait to see the expression on your face before I remember that I can't. But your mother says I may write again, so even if I can't see it, perhaps I can make you smile from afar. That will be my goal. I daren't hope for more just yet._

 _All my love,_

 _Your Patsy_


	3. Chapter 3

Dear Mrs Busby,

Thank you for your kind words and for letting me know how Delia fairs. Please tell her I will gladly write every week if she will allow it. I would very much like to know how her recovery is going, should you find the time to reply to my letters. I know how terribly busy you must be, so I will understand if this isn't possible every time.  
I have enclosed a letter to Delia and I would be very grateful if you would pass it on for me.

Yours Sincerely,

Patsy Mount

... ... ...

Dear Delia,

Well November has reared its ugly head and it's back to double vests and gloves here now. It rather feels as though winter has sunk its teeth in harder than usual to make up for those few unseasonable warm days and already there is frost on the cobbles when I set out on my early morning rounds. Still, Fred (our handyman and friend here at Nonnatus House) has somehow managed to tear himself away from his new marital bliss for long enough to mend the boiler and he has promised that the chimney will be swept by the time we all come home tonight. He said that last week as well, but this time he has been busily draping the place with old sheets to protect the carpet from soot, so we must give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that when we come home it will be to a cheerfully blazing fire and perhaps a nice mug of hot chocolate. One never knows ones luck!

Last night The Noakes family joined us for supper which was very jolly. Chummy Noakes used to be a midwife here at Nonnatus House and although she left before my time to get married, she is still a great friend to everyone here and works with us part time to help out when it gets especially busy. She is a wonderful dear. A boarding school girl like me but one of the best sort. She is quite possibly the tallest woman I have ever encountered (I put it down to all the sun in India where she spent her early years), so I imagine her being the gentle giant of a sixth former who would be shy with her peers but take frightened little first formers under her wing and have them laughing in no time. Of course Chummy is a good few years older than I am so school days are a thing of the past, but somehow no matter her own troubles or ours she always has us all smiling again within a few minutes of her arrival, just like my imaginary first formers.

Unfortunately though, in spite of the fact that cooking is not among Chummy's many talents she will insist on trying to help out by offering to bring the food whenever the family dines with us, and last night was no exception. After a valiant effort all round with rather blackened shepherd's pie, Sister Monica Joan set down her fork and announced that 'the time had come for sweet meats'!

Oh but have I told you of Sister Monica Joan yet? She is the oldest of the Nonnatus family and I can't begin to guess how many years she has worked as a nurse and nun in this community. Age has rather affected her and she is by turns the wisest and the most unusually eccentric person I have ever come across, with an appetite for cake unrivalled I am sure in all of London.

In any case, in the end I'm afraid to say we all plumped for crumpets and Battenberg instead of the pie (even Chummy!). It was perhaps not the most filling or nutritious of meals, but there is something immensely satisfying about living out everyone's secret childhood ambition to eat cake for dinner!

Usually Trixie, Barbara and I have a nightcap in the room Trixie and I share after supper, but last night it was just me and Babs. Trixie has taken to disappearing on mysterious errands that she refuses to explain with more than an enigmatic smile and a wave as she hurries away. I rather wonder if she is starting out with a new chap but afraid to jinx it by saying too much too soon. Still, it doesn't do to gossip and speculate on ones friend's affairs so I will tell you things I know for sure instead. Dear Barbara has no alcohol tolerance at all, as we learnt on her first night at Nonnatus (I was up until 3am in the bathroom with her, manning the mop and keeping her hydrated after she tried Trixie's 'fortified wine') so the lid stayed firmly on the bottle of scotch and we drank bournvita instead.

Barbara wanted to nip out for a bag of chips ("one cannot live on crumpets alone Patsy!") but somehow I couldn't bring myself to fancy them so she brought out her birthday box of chocolates instead. It was rather nice actually. Trixie is delightful company, never a dull moment but Barbara is rather shy by comparison so when the three of us are together I don't get such a chance to get to know her. It turns out she is quietly hilarious and had me in stitches over first day disaster stories. In one day she spent several hours on an overcrowded train (standing wedged between a woman with an enormous Victorian perambulator that Barbara said could probably have fit _her_ inside and still leave room for three or four babies; and a teenage boy who spent the entire journey trying to sneak a peak down her shirt), got lost on the streets of Poplar, was presented with an unsolicited bunch of bananas by a market vendor (just what everyone needs when starting a new endeavour I'm sure) and finally arrived at Nonnatus House only to have Sister Monica Joan refuse her entry. It was at that point that her suitcase burst open in the street and half the dogs in the neighbourhood decided to play piggy in the middle with the most personal of her clothing! It only ended when Sister Monica Joan had a change of heart and came out to throw a bucket of water over the lot of them, giving poor Babs a chance to pick her soaked garments out of the gutter. Then of course to top it all off Trixie and I accidentally poisoned the poor girl with alcohol in our attempt to welcome her. For all her gentle exterior she must be tougher than she gets credit for simply for not having run away after that first disastrous day!

Anyway, much as I would love to stay and chat, duty calls again, this time in the form of insulin injections to give and dressings to change (I am on the district nursing rosta this week).

All the best,  
Patsy

... ... ...

 _Darlings Deels,_

 _I'm afraid I lied to you in my letter today. Life in Poplar is not the rosy image I have been trying to paint with my words. I am almost sure I know where Trixie goes in the evenings and it is certainly not to see a man. I know she isn't coping but I don't know how to help because it's all I can do to keep my own happy face in place until we switch off our lamp for the night. She doesn't talk about it, at least not to me (I think she sees more of my own distraction than she lets on) but the simple fact that 'Trixie's bar' has been closed for business the last few days shows that her difficulties with drink have come to a head. I want to ask her about it, but how can I? Sometimes the mask is all we have, and it would be unfair to snatch Trixie's from her while I still cling so fiercely to my own._

 _The rest is true, apart from my own role in the proceedings. I hardly hear the conversations over dinner these days. When I make myself laugh at a funny story it sounds to my ears more like I'm crying and I am afraid someone will notice and ask what's wrong because kindness might just pull me apart. Mostly what gets me through is thinking about how, if I can make it through this dinner or that dance, I will be able to write of it to you and maybe it will make you smile. Only happy things for you now my darling. Whatever happens here I will not write to you of sorrow. You have helped me stay strong for so long, and now I will be strong for you._

 _When my mother and sister died it was in a place where feelings made you weak. I thought that if only I had known enough I might have been able to do the right things to save them. In her last sickness my mother caught me crying and told me to wipe my eyes and put on a happy face because pain is how we know we're still alive but being strong is nine tenths pretending you're immune. Once she was gone I learned that no matter how many tears I shed, sentiment would not bring either of them back, so I buried it and poured all my energy into learning to perform useful actions instead. I have supported people through the best and worst days of their lives, I have seen birth and death and poverty and although I have always cared and worked to make the world a better place, until I met you I never let it touch the deepest part of me. But you- you waltzed right in and turned me into a softer person without me ever suspecting it was happening._

 _It wasn't until I went back to our flat after seeing you in the hospital that I realized that sentiment isn't meant for those whom tragedy has taken away - it's for those of us left behind. I can't bring back your memories for you, I can't even be the one to care for you while you recover, but I could scrub a window and put your flowers there to catch the morning light just the way you dreamt it should be, and I can write these secret love letters that you will probably never see. And if those things are more balm to my soul than yours, well, I have come to realize that that's alright too. Pain might be how we know we're alive but perhaps sentiment and hope are how we know we're human._

 _I love you Delia._

 _Ever yours,_

 _Patsy_


	4. Chapter 4

AN: I just want to say thank you so so much to people who have reviewed so far. It honestly means so much that you take the time to comment on my story. You are wonderful human beings and it absolutely makes my day to see them :)

[edit: it was pointed out to me that I might have made Mrs Busby in this new version a bit TOO harsh without explaining why properly, so I have gone back to her letter and softened/expanded on it a bit. It doesn't change the plot in any way, just smooths things over a little]

* * *

Dear Miss Mount,

I was glad to receive your letter, as was Delia. However I'm afraid I must confess that I will not be passing on your promise to write every week. I hope you won't take this as an affront as it is not meant personally - the kindness demonstrated in your offer does you credit, and I hope you will realise that both Delia and I appreciate what you have done for her so far. I have no doubt that you have the best of intentions to keep up a faithful correspondence as you have said, but it seems clear from your letters that you are a busy young lady, and such things may well fall by the wayside as time goes by. It seems inevitable that as the shock of this accident wears off your other activities will return to the forefront of your attention and you will find yourself with less time to devote to an absent friend, particularly one so unwell. You must be aware Miss Mount that the Delia you knew is not the same girl I see every day, struggling to recall whether she takes sugar in her tea or prefers eggs boiled or scrambled. While _I_ may live for and rejoice in the glimpses of my Delia that come through, I fail to see what benefit _you_ gain from writing to a girl to whom you are, to all intents and purposes, a stranger. I know that may be difficult for you to hear - it is difficult for me as well. But Delia is my daughter, and that will never change no matter what she does or doesn't remember. I will not let her be hurt if I can help it.

I do not seek to insult you in saying this, only to state the truth. I understand that it is the natural course of things for you to move on from this tragedy and will not judge you harshly when it happens, but you in turn must understand that my priority is my daughter's health and happiness. Delia and I _cannot_ move on from this, and I don't want things to be harder on her than they have to be when the time comes. At present you are a pleasant diversion for Delia and nothing more, but I would hate for her to grow attached to you as time goes on, only to have you lose interest in your turn. Her short term memory is much improved since she left the hospital and with her confinement to her bed for all but an hour a day she might easily come to rely on your letters to add variety and interest to her life.

I admit that that is well enough, for now, and I am grateful for it, as I am for anything that can make my daughter smile. But I would not wish to give her false hope of a long term correspondence if that is not what this is to be for you, especially given the fragility of her current emotional state. No doubt when she is able to be up and about more she will find interests here at home to engage with and will feel less of a need for someone else's stories to keep her entertained, but in the mean time I would urge you to be sensitive and to think of Delia's needs before your own in this matter. As such, I think it would be for the best for all concerned to take these letters one correspondence at a time, without any undue expectations on either side, don't you?

That being said, Delia has asked me to send you her regards and wishes you to know that she too has been practising her bandage work (it is part of her rehabilitation to practice old skills in the hope of jogging associated memories). She says that although she may not know how she knows, she is sure she could have even the clumsiest cubs making perfect dressings in no time. I am taking that as a good sign and I would invite you to do the same.

Yours Sincerely,

Mrs M. Busby

... ... ...

Dear Mrs Busby,

I understand your concerns completely; in your place I might feel the same way. I apologise if I have come across as too forward in my letters to you so far, but I want to assure you that I will not forget about Delia, no matter how busy life may get. I know it feels like a gamble to put any part of your daughter's happiness into the hands of someone who is a virtual stranger to you, and if you think it best not to make promises I will of course understand and abide by that. As you say, we must put Delia's well-being first, and if she should ever tell me she doesn't want me to write anymore then of course I will stop.

But even so I want you to know that in the time we spent together in London Delia became my closest friend. Your daughter is one of the kindest people I know and she has helped me through difficult days as well as sharing the good ones. She may not remember that, but I do, and I don't believe that her accident has altered her nature even if she can't recall the specifics of why I should want to write to her. I am not a fair weather friend Mrs Busby, and if Delia never recovers her memory or reaches a point where she is able to live independently I will still gladly be a pen pal for as long as she wants me, and a visitor should she ever come to wish it. I don't make promises lightly, so I hope in time you will come to realize that I am truly in earnest on this matter.

Yours Sincerely,

Patsy Mount

... ... ...

Dear Delia,

Fred has embarked on a new money making scheme this week. He always has one or two little projects on the go but every now and then he gets one of his Grand Ideas and convinces himself he is going to make his fortune through the unlikely avenue of (to name but a few) pigs, or toffee apples and quails eggs (those two he had going at the same time so all the toffee got feathers stuck to it and he was shut down for being unhygienic). This year he has decided that Christmas is the great Missed Opportunity for sales (yes I know, it's not even December yet, but he won't be told). I did try to point out that one or two others might have gotten in ahead of him on the old 'selling things for Christmas' front but he wasn't having any of it.

So can you guess what Fred's big idea is? Something traditional perhaps, like a roasted chestnut stall? Or a cart selling snips of holly to decorate Christmas puddings? Oh no, of course not, not for our Fred! Credit where it's due he did try to stick to tradition at first, but Sister Evangelina put her foot down when he tried to move a dozen scrawny young turkey's into the yard at Nonnatus (he wanted to fatten them up ready for Christmas), and Violet (Fred's new wife) very sensibly refused to have them anywhere near her flat either, so back to the drawing board he went and came back with ...(drum roll please)... novelty brussel sprouts. No, you didn't read that wrong, Fred has decided that what people need at Christmas is not sherry or fruit cake or (heaven forbid) a spirit of unselfish goodwill to all mankind, but miniature cabbage-like vegetables carved into the likenesses of snowmen, angels and Christmas puddings.

I honestly have never seen anyone attempt to do anything more complicated than chop such vegetables in half, but Fred has a twenty pound sack of the things in the kitchen and in every spare moment he can be found trying to whittle them into shape then boiling them to see if they are still recognizable. It really is getting rather tiresome to have to brush away little green piles of discarded leaf before being able to safely spread ones toast in the morning, and even kind hearted Barbara is refusing to eat any more of his failed attempts. I do believe I can speak for us all when I say that nothing green will be welcome on the plates of Nonnatus House for quite some time! You should consider this fair warning Delia – if Fred ever does perfect his Novelty Christmas Sprouts (which he will be marketing by the way as 'Buckle Sprouts' as Buckle is his last name) he may just decide to send you a nice package of them as well! Even Wales isn't far enough away to avoid that I'm afraid. He was talking yesterday about trying to send some to his daughter in _Australia_! Of course by the time they made it there they would be unrecognizable as anything but compost but I didn't have the heart to burst his bubble (especially if it means less of them make it onto our table!).

Sister Monica Joan is _most_ unimpressed and has taken to flicking the sprouts into the fire place or hiding them beneath cushions and in her knitting bag to avoid having to eat them. This morning when Fred was preparing his latest batch I saw her take one from the table and hide it up her sleeve, then when she was on her way out the room she took aim and launched it at the back of his head, bold as you like! For a lady in her 90s she's a deadly accurate shot and it bounced neatly off his bald spot in the most comical manner imaginable. He took the hint and moved his operations out to the shed after that and I am rather relieved, although I dare say the nip in the air will drive him back inside before long.

Besides Fred's leafy adventures life goes on much as usual here in London. Doctor Turner has discovered a brand new wonder drug that has all our pregnant women in raptures as they say it quite cures even the worst cases of morning sickness. It seems medicine is making such leaps that it won't be long before there is a single pill to cure any ailment one could care to mention! Sister Evangelina is not impressed though, she says people rely too much on drugs and modern indulgences, and except for in the most severe cases a little bit of queasiness is no reason to go bothering doctor for lotions and potions (her words, not mine). I believe she thinks anything that seems easy is suspect! She had the same reaction to Nurse Crane's rolodex and yet (though she would never admit it) I do believe she appreciates it now more than any of the rest of us. But then Nurse Crane and Sister Evangelina have never seen eye to eye, they are simply too stubborn and certain they are right to admit that actually, they are very similar.

But what of you Delia? I hear you are doing great things as well? Your mother tells me you have been practising your nursing skills and are feeling quite ready to teach young scamps of boys to bandage again. I am very glad to hear that as it means you are getting stronger. Perhaps before too long you will be able to write to me of Wales and the way you spend your days there. I'm sure your room is simply charming. I imagine it with sunny yellow walls and a dozen dolls on the window sill that you used as your 'patients' when you were a little girl playing nurses. Am I close? Do tell me so I can picture it all!

Fondest Regards,

Patsy

... ... ...

 _My dearest Delia,_

 _I'm afraid your mother is trying to dissuade me from writing to you, or at least to make it clear that when you are better she expects these letters to cease. I hope I'm reading too much into her words and she really is just worried that I will lose interest and you'll be left disappointed, as if that is the case I can simply prove her wrong... but I'm afraid that in fact the problem is that she doesn't want you to maintain too much of a connection to your life here in London... or to me. I wonder if you will_ ever _be allowed to come back, even if you recover fully? I certainly get the impression that that's not what she wants, and what if you agree? She's your mother after all, you might decide to stay just to please her. You might even decide you don't want to hear from me anymore._

 _But I can't think like that._

 _There are too many 'what ifs', and if I let myself dwell too much on all the ways things could go wrong in the future I won't be able to keep from crying. I can't let that happen, because if I start I may never stop. So I need to do as she advised and take things one day at a time.  
_

 _And today, I feel as if I am starved. Your mother's letters barely_ begin _to answer my wonderings, let alone provide those little extra details that are so important during a recovery. She writes that you are now allowed out of bed for an hour a day and that you have been practising doing the things you used to love. I almost teared up over the last lines because I could so nearly hear your voice in those words about your bandage practice. My sweet sunny Deels, somehow you always find the best in a situation. I think I might have smiled for real for the first time since it happened when I read that, though it brought me closer to crying than anything else has too._

 _Since I sent my reply I have been terribly afraid that I might have pushed too hard. I have been so careful to write only of mundane things without pushing for any more information than I was freely given about your life, but this time was different. Ironically I think it was because of your mother's discouragement that I dared to do it. I panicked that she would stop writing altogether, and I couldn't bear the idea of not having any more news of you at all. So I all but asked you out right to reply to the letter yourself. I don't know why it feels dangerous, really, but it does. As if, should I show I care too much, your family really will tell me to leave you alone... No. if I'm honest with myself that_ isn't _what scares me. What truly terrifies me is the thought that_ you _might tell me to leave you alone. It is so difficult to strike a balance between what is proper and what I long for. In my mind you are still the one who takes my hand at every opportunity, almost without thought for who might see and judge us. But for you it's different. Your mother said you see me as little more than a stranger. Is that really true? I wish I could hear it from you, rather than having to take her word for it. Do you think of me as your friend, for all you can't remember me? As a character from some distant story? Or as someone to be pitied, someone who can't let go of what is no longer hers? I hate not knowing.  
_

 _It's funny. Your mother doesn't trust me to be there for you the way she knows you deserve, and yet I think I feel the same way about her. Oh I know she loves you and is devoted to your well-being, but I can't help worrying that she can't possibly be caring for you as I would (does she do your hair every day the way you like it, even if no one will see? Does she make you biscuits with a dash of cinnamon because you love the taste of Christmas no matter what the time of year? Does she tell you of the world outside and play games with you so you aren't bored during your confinement?). I suppose this sort of fear is true of anyone who is helpless when the one they love is suffering. I have seen many a dithering father desperate to do something,_ anything _to help when we are trying to deliver babies and they inevitably get underfoot and need to be sent sternly away. I think I will be a little more sympathetic towards them in future, now I truly know what it is like to be banished from where the one you love is in pain and given only the barest scraps of information until after the fact._

 _Oh Delia, if only I could see you again, to have an image of you recovering to replace the awful picture of you looking so small and hurt in the hospital with the light all gone from your eyes. I long to see you smile again, even if you are smiling for the first bite of a rosy apple or the antics of a bumblebee on the honeysuckle outside your window and not for me at all._

 _I am finding it so hard to live up to my name and be patient when all I really long to do is get on a train and rush to your bedside. If only you had a phone so I could at least hear your voice. But perhaps in time, if your mother comes to see that I truly mean to be here for you… perhaps she might let me come and see you one day (I confess I dropped the smallest hint of my desire to see you in my last letter to her, in spite of her cautioning). My heart (the traitorous thing) is crying out 'or perhaps you'll invite me yourself!' but that hope is a spark still too fragile to expose to the cold winds of reality so I am doing my best to pretend I can't hear it._

 _I love you Delia._

 _Most truly yours,_  
 _Patsy_


	5. Chapter 5

AN: I know this chapter is a bit short compared to the last couple, but it sort of has to be I'm afraid... they will get longer again as time goes by!

(if the letter seems a little disjointed in places, remember that although she's doing her best, Delia is still prone to losing her train of thought at this point, _and_ she's having to write in intervals rather than all at once. It's still relatively early days in her recovery, so we can't expect her to be quite up to her usual standard of articulation! Somehow I don't think Patsy will care though)

* * *

Dear Pats,

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to write to you myself, I hope you didn't think for a moment that I don't appreciate your letters! I'm truly so grateful to you for sending them, they cheer me up more than I can say. I've wanted to write back to you since the very first one, but to begin with mam wouldn't let me even read them for myself in case straining my eyes brought on a seizure. I did tell her that if I wasn't allowed to write then I wanted her to at least let you know how much I was enjoying hearing from you and to keep you updated on how things were here. She said she would but I didn't read her letters, so I hope she sent nice long ones, and didn't tell too many tales about what a bothersome patient I can be!

Actually, mam's a little out of sorts today as she _still_ doesn't think I should be writing, but after your last letter I asked the doctor for his opinion on the matter during one of my follow up checks and he said he doesn't see why I shouldn't, so in the end she had to relent. Even now though she won't let me spend more than a minute or two at a time writing in case it wears me out, so it might be several days before I actually manage to get this sent off.

It's funny, writing this. Mam showed me the birthday card I sent her last year and although I still have no memory of writing it, or even sitting in school and learning to write in the first place, my handwriting matches it exactly. It's as though my hands remember as much as they ever did, even if my mind has forgotten. It was like that with the bandages as well, now I come to think on it. I find myself staring at my fingers sometimes, as if my hands are an entity in their own right, wondering what else they know that I don't. Perhaps all my secrets are written out there in the lines of my palms, waiting for me to remember how to read them. Does that sound strange? I find it hard to judge what's normal and what isn't these days.

I wake up every Friday feeling a little bit excited, knowing that today's the day my letter from Patsy arrives. Mam says I mustn't rely on it continuing, but even though it's only been a few weeks, somehow I know that whatever she says, there it will be on the mat when I wake up, full of sunshine and funny stories. I think you must be a sort of angel, taking it upon yourself to write to injured nurses and lead cub packs when you must have a hundred more interesting things to do! But I'm glad you do it anyway.

Oh dear, am I being impertinent? Mam read a bit over my shoulder and says I am and should cross that last part out as it isn't at all appropriate to make such assumptions about someone I don't know. I told her I would but somehow I don't think you'll mind, because you're not really a stranger are you Pats?

You asked about my bedroom. Goodness knows I spend enough time here to tell you all about it! I liked the way you made it sound in your letter. I think I'd like yellow walls, it would be so sunny and cheerful to wake up to, even in winter. Really, the walls in here are whitewashed with wooden beams on the ceiling, but I do have a bit of colour too as they are covered in pictures. They weren't at first, but a few days ago mam brought out all my clumsy old artwork from my school days and spent an afternoon pinning it up in every spare inch of wall space (I did offer to help but she wouln't hear of it). She _says_ she wants to make the room brighter, but I think really she is trying to get me to remember painting them. I am trying to, but somehow the prim floral water colours don't feel like they have much to do with me. Did I paint them because I liked them, or because she did? Or because some stuffy old art mistress thought that girls _ought_ to paint flowers? I can't tell you how frustrating not knowing that is!  
The floor is made of wooden boards too, so old that the ground isn't quite level beneath your feet, like gently rolling hills. It took me a while to realize that it really _was_ the floor and not some manner of vertigo that made me feel as though I wasn't walking straight when I was first allowed to stand up on my own. Even so I rather like them - the boards are worn smooth as silk, which makes me want to slide across them in my stockinged feet and pretend to be an ice skater. I wonder if that's a childhood memory surfacing or just childish whimsy brought on by too much time inside? I don't know for sure, but I think perhaps I'm the kind of person that needs to be active to be truly content.

Oh dear, what must you think of me grumbling on like this over all the little things I can't do yet? I must sound so ungrateful to my poor mam! And I haven't even told you about the dolls! There are three of them on my windowsill, just where you said they'd be; two rag dolls and a sweet faced porcelain girl with ringlets and a crinoline. I wonder if I did nurse them as a child? I like to think so. I feel more able to relate to the little girl tending dolls covered in lipstick measles than the young lady painting roses and violets in pastel shades. I wonder what their names were.

I must sign off now Patsy, mam says if I'm quick she'll drop this off at the post office on her way to get the fish for supper, and I would _so_ like it to arrive with you before you send your next one! (Oh there I go again being impertinent. I mean of course, should you decide to write again… but please do decide to!).

Love,  
Delia


	6. Chapter 6

_Dearest, wonderful, darling Delia,_

 _Oh your letter! I can't even begin to put into words how happy it made me. As much as I longed for it I have been so afraid of this moment in case I didn't recognize the girl writing back to me. Now I can't think how I could have imagined you'd be anyone else. I could hear you saying the words to me so clearly it could have been a memory of a conversation we'd had face to face. I feel as though I can take a full breath of air for the first time in weeks and the unaccustomed oxygen has made me quite giddy. When Sister Evangelina handed me your letter I almost put it straight in my pocket without a glance as my hands were rather full of tea and toast at the time. But I couldn't prevent the hope that flared in my chest at the sight and I flipped it over to check the handwriting before I tucked it away._

 _And it was yours. Not a struggling amnesiacs approximation of yours, but the real, undeniable full Delia penmanship. I know it would be foolish to think this means everything is going to be alright. You have a long and probably confusing and difficult journey ahead of you even if your memory fully returns, and who's to say you will still want what we had? After all what you once said was true, life would be easier for you if you did as the rest of the world insists and married some suitable man who would provide for you. But just for today, while I'm holding this milestone letter I will allow myself the luxury of hope. Because this is so much more than the response I dared to wish for._

 _Delia, your hands remember. Would they remember me I wonder? If I were there with you might you reach for my hand as naturally as breathing, the way you used to? If the whole world were watching I don't believe I could pull back my hand again if you did. And after all why shouldn't the touch of my skin feel as familiar as the loops and whorls of your written words? "Because you're not really a stranger, are you Pats?" (you called me Pats! I have never signed off that way to you and yet there it is, as if you knew it all along)._

 _Even in one short letter your casual boldness makes me fall a little deeper in love with you all over again. All this time I have been studiously avoiding making requests of you and signing off with carefully chosen regards, and yet you, in your very first letter tell me out right that I must write again, and you signed it with love. Love Delia. If I never get anything else, those words will still be treasures that I can carry with me always._

 _I love you Delia Busby._

 _Yours (giddily, joyfully yours)_  
 _Patsy_

... ... ...

Dear Delia,

I was so pleased to get your letter! I don't think you impertinent at all, I am very glad you didn't cross that part out because it let me know that my letters are doing exactly as I hoped they would and making you smile. And of course I will write again! (where else would I find such a receptive audience for my stories of cats in socks and oddly shaped vegetables after all?).

I loved your description of your room, it sounds utterly charming, just like you (although I think you're right about all the watercolours of flowers. I suspect if you had the urge to paint flowers it would be wild ones in a meadow. Although you never told me you could paint!). I confess that the image of you ice skating across the floor boards helped me keep smiling even when a little girl at the clinic drank an entire bottle of rosehip syrup in one go (goodness knows how she got hold of it or why she took it upon herself to drink it all as usually we can't give the stuff away) then proceeded to spin round in circles until she fell over. She wasn't hurt and I might have avoided disaster if I had just let her pick herself up when the dizziness passed, but a rather boisterous game of tag had started up among some of the older ones and she was such a little thing I didn't want her to get trampled. Unfortunately the moment I had her in my arms she went alarmingly pale and promptly ejected her stomach contents all down my front. That was bad enough in itself, but then the little scamp had the audacity to wrinkle her nose at me and demand loudly that I put her down because I smelled like syrup! Trixie (who was near by and might easily have come to my rescue at that point) promptly discovered something she just _had_ to get from the back room and hurried away to have a good laugh where she wouldn't be overheard. I couldn't stay cross with her for long though as she did cover my patients while I went off to get cleaned up and find a fresh uniform, and I suppose my face when the little tyke told me off for smelling of the stuff she had just vomited all over me really must have been a picture.

I'm having young Timothy Turner pay a guest visit with the cubs this week. He is Doctor Turner's son and back when Chummy was Akela he was among their number. Although he is too old for the group now he is still only just entering his teenage years and found it ever so exciting to be asked as a volunteer rather than as one of the pack. I learned recently that he has something of a penchant for photography so he is going to teach us all how to make a pinhole camera and explain a bit about developing. I think it will be good for the boys to have someone like Timothy teach them. He was so recently one of them he knows the sorts of things to say to keep everyone ticking along happily, but he is also a clever, sensible boy who is just enough older than them for them to look up to as an authority in a different way to how they see grown ups. He's going to develop any photos our lads manage to take for us, so if there are any particularly good ones of the boys I'll ask him for a copy to send you so you can see how they're getting along. You are not forgotten among them you know - more than one of them asks after you regularly and wants to know when you're going to come and teach them about blood (blood! Honestly Deels what have you been promising them? I don't know what it is about boys that gives them such a fascination with the gruesome, but they are certain that, because of your St John's Ambulance first aid experience, you must be an absolute authority on blood).

It's actually all been rather dramatic here this week. On Monday we had a young father run all the way to Nonnatus House from his home several streets away, his coat streaming out behind him like the cape of a knight riding into battle, shoes on the wrong feet and laces trailing, and his two year old son who appeared to be passed out and covered in blood cradled in his arms (although why he came to us rather than Doctor I am sure I will never know, we are nurses and midwives, not surgeons!). I tell you my heart nearly stopped when I saw the tiny little thing covered in scarlet; I thought there had been a murder and the boy's father was completely hysterical. He told me that his wife was sick in bed and he had left the little one alone in the kitchen for just five minutes while he shaved for work, but when he came back he found a great mess of pans and broken jars on the floor along with a large steak knife which he was sure must have run the boy through, though he hadn't stopped to look for a wound before he brought him here.

By now you are probably horrified at the grievous injury of this child and the apparently casual way I'm describing it. But don't be alarmed. I got the child inside and was about to tell the father to phone for Doctor Turner and an ambulance but as soon as the little lad was out of the shadow of his father's coat I could see it wasn't quite what it had first seemed. The blood was a little _too_ red and rather… viscous. When I looked closer I discovered lumps of the stuff caught in the collar of his shirt and squeezed between his sticky fingers. It was strawberry jam. At that point we weren't certain exactly what had happened, but it seemed entirely likely that the boy had recognised his opportunity for mischief when his father left the room and made straight for the shelves where the jam was kept. He must have knocked various things down from lower shelves as he climbed to reach it, then proceeded to eat as much of the jam as he could and, by the look of him, smeared whatever he couldn't manage over his face and clothes. Since his father had found him apparently unconscious he must have had such a full stomach after all that sugary food that he'd fallen asleep right there among the chaos. He got rather a surprise when he woke up to find himself surrounded by people and being checked over by a nurse. There wasn't a scratch on him and he was none the worse except for having very little appetite for breakfast!

Now there, what did I tell you? Boys and blood. Absolutely obsessed, even the babies are at it! The father went nearly as red as the jam when he realized his son wasn't injured at all, he was so embarrassed. He admitted that it was his first time left alone in charge of the boy and he had been so afraid that there would be a disaster that when he found him in the kitchen he had immediately assumed the worst. It's funny how women cope so well with all manner of catastrophes, but give a man a baby and he's quite helpless! (not all of them I know, just look at Chummy's husband Sergeant Noakes who is wonderful with their son Freddie, but some of the men in Popular have such archaic views of child rearing that they have nothing whatever to do with the messier aspects of their children, so without their wives to hold their hands through it they simply have no idea what to do!). I did feel rather foolish after the fact for my own part in the escapade, but all's well that ends well as they say!

I do hope you'll write again Delia, and tell me all about your week.

Love,  
Patsy


	7. Chapter 7

Dear Patsy,

I am utterly intrigued! I wonder what I could have promised those cubs to have them all clamouring for blood like a flock of pint-sized vampires? (Do vampires come in flocks or is that just sheep? A herd? A gaggle? None of them quite fits. What do you think?). Whatever it was it sounds as though I must have been quite a handful as a friend! I wasn't terribly gruesome and ghoulish was I? I don't feel any particular desire to hear stories about blood myself. Except yours of course, which I loved reading! But that was really about jam so I don't think it counts.

I am learning so much about myself now that I'm allowed to do more than sleep (I don't think I ever want to see another sedative again as long as I live). I know how to knit! Did you know that? So far I've made a stripy tea cosy from all the left over bits of wool mam had lying around and I'm thinking of starting a new project soon. Something special. I'd really like to make you a Christmas present as a thank you for all your patience and kindness since I got hurt. I had planned it as a surprise, but then I realized I really don't know what you need. Maybe a scarf? I'd like to think of it keeping you warm when you're out catching babies in the middle of the night. What's your favourite colour? I was thinking of a nice rich red or maybe a dark green but then I started worrying: what if your favourite colour is pale pink, or if you only ever wear designer silk scarves? Maybe a hand knitted, homely woollen scarf wouldn't be your cup of tea at all. Or maybe you have a dozen of them already. I could send a box of chocolates or a bottle of sherry instead? I'm sorry to be breaking with tradition and asking you for tips on your own Christmas present, but you're the only one I still know outside this village and I can hardly ask the milk man! Ordinarily I would just guess and hope that the thought would make up for any short comings, but for some reason it feels important that I should get this right.

How did the pinhole camera session go? I would love to see photos of the cubs at their games, but if I get to choose I'd much rather have a photo of _you_ Pats. Sometimes I forget that I don't know what you look like and then when I remember I'm surprised and confused all over again, because you've been my friend as long as I can remember, even if that is only a few weeks. Are you tall, or little like me? What colour are your eyes? And your hair? I don't like the thought that I could walk past you in the street one day and never know it, though I know that's silly with you all the way in London and me not even going as far from my room as our village post box yet.  
I know from mam that you came to visit in the hospital but everything was still such a blur then, I can't really remember anything before being here. Except… I think you were crying, and it made me want to put my arms round you and make it better only I couldn't because I was what was making you cry. I'm sorry I made you cry Patsy. I wouldn't ever want to do that.

Oh but Pats! I do have news. It might not be as far as the post box but I'm not confined to my room anymore, and today I spent almost the whole morning out in the garden. It feels _so_ good to be outside! I wonder if this is what a child experiences when they're still young enough that the whole world is new to them. If so it's a great shame that we ever grow out of it. I actually felt the urge to point out birds and clouds and holly berries like a toddler in my delight at seeing them without a pane of glass between us at last. I know that sounds daft, but I couldn't seem to help myself. It isn't that I didn't recognise things (thank goodness the damage to my brain wasn't _that_ severe), it was more like... like there was colour in the world for the first time and I was the only one noticing it - I just wanted to share my discoveries so someone else could be as happy as I was (have you ever _really_ noticed how round a holly berry is, or how good cool clean air tastes, or that whooshing sound a pigeon's wings make as it takes off?).I know I'm not making much sense, so you will simply have to trust me when I say it was utterly thrilling after nothing but the walls of my bedroom and glimpses of the street from the window for weeks.

So much so in fact that the only thing that stopped me taking off my shoes and wading right into the stream that runs behind the house was my mam threatening to send me straight back to bed for the rest of the week if I didn't keep wrapped up and go slowly. She's terrified of seizures (or my 'funny turns' as she calls them) and I do still have them every now and then, but they're not so bad really. I don't remember the part where they're actually happening; I just wake up afterwards on the floor feeling slow and uncoordinated and play 'where have I bruised myself this time'. But since it's true that I'm not the one who would have had to drag me out the stream if I were unlucky enough to have one of my rare fits while I was wading (and alright, the water _might_ have been pretty chilly, but I'm sure it would have been worth it), I couldn't really argue back too fiercely when mam said I wasn't to go in, no matter how thirsty my feet suddenly felt for that splashing silver water. In the end we spent the time usefully employed in harvesting the last of this year's leeks and parsnips together and chatting about what to plant in the spring. I found it a little hard to talk about that actually, because mam spoke as though everything would be just as it is now, but I _so_ want to be better and back to my real life by then, the idea that I might still be here struggling to remember things while we plant carrots and potatoes is too upsetting to bear.

Luckily mam just thought I was tired by the work and made me sit in a lawn chair with several blankets tucked about me and a hot cup of tea, and by the time she was sitting down beside me she seemed to have forgotten the conversation we'd been having. Instead, she told me stories from her own childhood. Just little things that the garden put her in mind of, like how every day she'd be given her grandad's flask of tea to carry down the road to the allotment when she was a little girl, and while he drank it he'd let her sample his vegetables fresh from the ground. She told me about one time when she couldn't have been more than four and had bitten into a raddish without knowing what it was: grandad laughed so hard at the appalled expression on her face when she tasted it that his dentures went flying out his mouth and lodged so firmly in a turnip that he had to use his pen knife to gouge them out. I like hearing those sorts of stories more than anything, because there's no expectation that I should recognise them from my own memory or gain some greater meaning from them. They let me just feel normal for a little while, and help me get to know mam again in a way I couldn't otherwise (at least until I regain some of my own memories of her). They're rather like your letters in that respect! (although truly your story about Fred's Buckle Sprouts and Sister Monica Joan's objections to them surpasses even mam's toothy turnip).

Until Friday then Patsy (I will be waiting by the door at seven when the postman comes).

Love,  
Delia


	8. Chapter 8

Dear Delia,

I think perhaps vampires are too solitary to have a collective noun. If they do have one I feel sure it couldn't possibly be a gaggle; that seems much too undignified for such imposing creatures. I suppose they could be a colony, like bats? I'm afraid I was never very taken with horror stories myself, but I dare say Mr Stoker might have penned an answer to your query in 'Dracula', should you be of a mind to search for it!

You aren't a handful at all and I have never known you to be the least bit gruesome. I think the cubs' desire says far more about the minds of young boys than it does about yours! I am quite sure they could find a way to make a lesson on origami into something ghoulish, so you mustn't take it personally. I expect you very innocently offered to explain the cardiovascular system or teach them how to keep a wound clean properly and the little imps let their imaginations run away with them.

It was the same way in the camera session. Out of all the photos that came out properly (a few were spoilt by over exposure or blurred by someone moving too soon and one was completely crushed when young Alfie tripped over his own feet and flattened his camera by sitting on it) in all but four of them the subject of the picture was pulling the strangest face he could possibly manage given the physical limitations of muscle and bone. We have a series of crossed eyes, lolling tongues, puffed out cheeks and snubbed noses, in spite of the fact that whenever Fred or I were actually watching them the boys seemed to be posing as sweetly as angels. Although Fred might not have been such a good influence as I believed at the time, as when Timothy brought the photographs round to show me I discovered that the urge to grimace when faced with a camera does not go away with age and one of the shots included Fred himself with his thumbs in his ears as unabashedly as a ten year old! They are all rather comical, but certainly not the most flattering pictures! Unfortunately I couldn't get a decent group shot either (alas the one that looked to be most promising was also the one that Alfie landed on when he fell over) so I haven't sent you one this time. I wouldn't want to put you off the boys by showing you want seems to be a parade of little monsters! They may be a bit rambunctious but they really are very sweet children at heart. Perhaps if I can persuade Timothy to bring his camera when we hold our Christmas performance I will be able to send you a better photo of them then.

As for knowing what I look like, well that is easily remedied. I am taller than you by about half a head and my eyes are blue. If you ever did chance to see me on the street you could be sure to know me by my hair, with is rather a vivid shade of red (I hated it as a child, but have become fond of it in the last few years). I'm afraid the only suitable photograph of myself I could find was the one they took when I started training at The London, so I'm in uniform and looking quite sombre and formal, but I have enclosed it anyway so that you might know my face. I hope it will suffice?

It's so kind of you to think of me, but you really needn't send me a Christmas present you know Delia, although should you decide to send a letter or a card I would be very glad to have it. It is funny that you should think of a scarf though; especially a red one! You see I lost mine some weeks ago and have been going along without one since. I am certainly not opposed to woolly things, especially home made ones. They are much cosier than designer silk, and the care and attention that goes into them makes them much more valuable to my mind that something churned out by a factory or tailor! Oh, speaking of which, Fred has finally had to concede defeat on his Buckle sprouts, much to the relief of Sister Monica Joan (and, although I feel a little mean to poor Fred for saying so, myself and probably everyone else at Nonnatus House as well, although none of us are so vocal about it). She has suggested we give the remaining eight pounds of sprouts as a donation to the infants' school to be used as marbles. I imagine instead they will go to the church to be distributed to those families that need them, but I'm afraid I must confess that as long as they don't find their way onto my plate I don't mind where the blasted things go. I hope you won't think me callous, but there are only so many days in a row one can smell sprouts boiling before one wants nothing so much as to throw them out the window.

Trixie was _most_ displeased about the whole affair last night. In spite of the cold she had finally convinced Barbara and I to go out dancing with her for the first time in weeks, only to discover that the smell had even permeated our wardrobes. She honestly looked tempted to seek out Fred and give him a firm slap when she sniffed the collar of her newest dress and discovered the telltale cabbage-y odour on it. She says 'what's the good of dressing up to the nines when any chap that gets near enough to catch a whiff will instantly be put in mind of his grandmother's kitchen?'.

Although I must say that none of the chaps she spoke to seemed to be in the slightest bit put off by whatever slight trace we might have been unable to get rid of with the good airing out the window and spray of perfume we gave the clothes before putting them on. Trixie is a very glamorous and engaging dance partner, so I imagine nothing was further from their minds than their grandmother's cooking when she bestowed her presence on them! I found I was quite the gooseberry last night actually, as Trixie was in her element and even shy Barbara was exchanging blushes with a sweet young man named William who had just arrived from Cornwall and had a beautifully accomplished Waltz.

I'm afraid on this occasion I will have to side with your mother, on one thing at least - December probably is not the best time to be paddling barefoot in a stream! The last thing you want is to be back in bed because you've caught pneumonia, especially so close to Christmas. Better to save that particular pleasure for spring and enjoy the activities unique to winter while they are with us. Perhaps you could build a snow man? Or if the weather there is like London and you are getting a series of freezing rain showers rather than snow, bake Christmas biscuits instead. I have it on good authority that you particularly like cinnamon and nutmeg and Christmas is the perfect excuse, even if it is still some weeks away.

As to the rest – I'm so glad to hear you're well enough to be out and doing things again! I remember when we were training together and you came down with flu, you were quite irrepressible in your desire to get up, even when you were feverish and too dizzy to stand without hanging onto something. I can't imagine how much more frustrating this must be for you. I know it isn't a great deal of comfort, but I want you to know that I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that you _will_ get back your independence, whatever else happens. You are very far from helpless even now, so when you have rested a little longer and regained your physical strength, there's no reason you should still be there thinking of nothing beyond the vegetable garden, unless that's what you want. And in the meantime, I will gladly send you as many stories as you like to help stave off the boredom of recovery.

Love,  
Patsy

... ... ...

 _Dearest Delia,_

 _Oh my darling one, you didn't make me cry. The absence of you made me cry. I'm sorry the only memory you have left of me is that one, my moment of weakness and emotion when I should have been being strong for you, instead of something that would make you feel safe.  
_

 _I wrote to you that I lost my scarf, but the truth is, Sister Winifred found it in the road after you were taken to hospital and returned it to me the same night. The reason I have been going about without a scarf is that I can't bear to wear it and have it lose the trace of your perfume that still clings to the fibres. It is wrapped up carefully in the back of my drawer, and whenever I particularly miss you or have a day that makes me long to be able to rest my head on your shoulder and escape the world I take it out and bury my nose in it for a moment or two, just so I can pretend you're there._

 _I was in agonies over that photograph. I have so few and none of them seem sufficient to try and give you a sense of the woman you loved; not when you don't have the background to go with it. I know it is quite ridiculous but I feel so nervous over it, as if you will be looking and judging me on it. Will you find me worthy? Will you see past the blandly presented appearance to whatever spark it was that made you love me in the first place?_

 _I love you Delia._

 _Yours always,_  
 _Patsy_


	9. Chapter 9

Dear Pats,

Oh my goodness, why ever didn't you tell me you were so pretty?! I hope your young man considers himself the luckiest chap in the world to have captured the heart of someone who is so kind and interesting AND looks like she's stepped right out of an oil painting. Why don't you ever write of him to me? I must have known him, once. Did I disapprove of him terribly? (I imagine I thought he wasn't good enough for you and wanted you all to myself? No wonder if the scoundrel left you to go to dances alone and feel like a gooseberry!). Or perhaps _he_ disapproves of _me_? What fun, I'm beginning to think I might rather like to be disapproved of! (not too much you understand, but a little bit - just enough to imply that I'm someone with enough about me to warrant a strong opinion one way or another). But I'm sure you are always stalwart in your defence of your impertinent little friend when he mentions his feelings on the matter. Mam makes me out to be such a prim little lady when she tells me stories about myself that I rather enjoy feeling as though I might be a bit mischievous when I'm with you. You'd think I was almost a nun or a saint the way she speaks, and too shy to say boo to a goose…

I'm not sure if I should admit this to you or not, but I'm a little afraid Pats. What if I remember who I am and I don't like her? What if I don't recognise anything of what I think of now as being myself in the person I used to be? Most of me is so determined to get my memories back, but the things mam tells me just don't quite sit right, and now I'm up and interacting more I can't help feeling like she's a little disappointed that I'm not… different, somehow. It's as if I'm doing and saying everything wrong now, but I don't remember how I did it before so I can't put it right. I keept trying to tell myself that it's probably just be that she was hoping I'd have regained more of my memories by this point, but I still feel as though I'm not living up to the idea she has in her head of who her daughter is. She's been so kind to me while I've been getting better that I hate to disappoint her, but none of what she's told me _fits._ She says I never had a boyfriend when I was in London because I was devoted to my work, and the girl she knew as Delia seemed to spend an awful lot of her time volunteering or drifting around being dutiful. I don't sound at _all_ the sort of person to gain the favour of a pack of tempestuous young boys or to go dancing of an evening or even to slide around a bedroom in my stockings. But I don't know if it's that she didn't know me that well or if I don't. Was I really so _very_ proper (my heart says dull), or did I just write her the sort of letters one sends a conservative parent to keep them from worrying that you're going a little wild in the big city? And if that is what I was doing, what did I have to hide? I know I said it might be fun to be disapproved of, but even so I'd hate to discover that I'm actually some manner of criminal or thug. But then I think I can't have been all bad to have kept the friendship of someone like you. And you called me charming, which doesn't sound bad or boring.

I have your picture beside my bed now, so I can see it as soon as I wake up and know that whoever Delia Busby is, there is one wonderful person out there that cares for her. It makes me glad to know I have a friend, and I love being able to put a face to the name. Sometimes I catch sight of you sitting there on my dresser and think 'that's Patsy. She's my friend' and the thought makes me smile. I hope that's alright. I've just thought. Perhaps I was supposed to send the photo back? I will if you want me to Pats, but I would like to keep it if it's alright with you. It makes me feel safe somehow, to have you close.

I love hearing about Poplar and all the goings on of the people that work with you (Trixie and Barbara sound ever such fun, and Fred and Sister Monica Joan's antics have me in absolute stitches every time I read about them) but more than anything else I'd like to know news of you so that I might feel I know you. Just little things to help fill in the blanks. What's your full name? Have you always been a midwife or did you do something else first? Have you always lived in London?

On Saturday I went out to the village for the first time – all the way down the road and round the corner and on to the high street with a wicker basket on my arm like a proper village maiden. I'd just had your letter the day before and after hearing that you had lost yours I was determined to get just the right shade of wool to start making you a scarf. It's been more than a week since I last had a seizure and I was feeling so confident and ready to take the next step towards being recovered. I longed to go alone – to walk along a pavement like a normal person and browse and choose what I wanted without anyone staring at my bruises (all the ones from the accident have gone now so you'd never know what had happened to look at me) or asking why I wanted this or that thing. But mam wouldn't let me: 'you never know _what_ might happen Cariad, I don't want you going out there alone just yet. What if you had one of your funny turns crossing the road?'. So instead we went together, with her holding onto my arm like I was an invalid and watching me intently (although whether it was for signs of recognition of my surroundings or imminent seizure I'm not sure).

We did have a nice time I suppose, I got my wool (which I am very excited about because I think the colour will look gorgeous on you with your red hair) and we stopped by a cafe for tea and Welsh cakes (I don't suppose they have them much in London? Just in case you've never had them and don't know what I'm talking about,Welsh cakes are rather like scones, only flatter and more sugary). I tried to chat with the waitress but somehow mam ended up dominating the conversation, chipping in every couple of minutes about my 'condition' as if it meant I somehow nothing I said should be taken too seriously. I know she means well but I can't help feeling I'm being turned into a child, and if I was a nurse away in London I must be quite used to my independence. Do you think the knock has made me soft in the head without me realizing it Patsy? Please tell me honestly because if I am crazy I would like to at least know it.

I'm sorry for the rather dismal tone of this letter. I imagine whatever life I had expected to be living now, it was nothing like this and maybe that's what's making me feel so conflicted. Please write to me about all the adventures you've had this week so I can think on something else. I like to imagine you happily dashing about Poplar with all your friends and having fine times.

Love,  
Delia


	10. Chapter 10

Dear Delia,

Whatever makes you think I have a chap? Trixie is always bemoaning my lack of a boyfriend, but frankly I don't see much of an appeal. Perhaps it's the three years I worked on the male surgical ward (spending every day assisting in theatre during prostate surgery and giving opportunistically exhibitionist men bed baths is _quite_ enough to put even the staunchest lover of masculinity off the idea), or simply the fact that my life and work are so very female centred now (and of course deals in intimate detail with the consequences of carelessness!), but I simply can't see having a boyfriend as the be all and end all. Even were I so inclined, I'm sure I wouldn't so much as pass the time of day with a man that didn't approve of you, let alone take one out dancing! I can't really speak for you of course, but I think you rather felt the same way. Your lack of a boyfriend had nothing to do with shyness or being excessively dutiful, it was a simple matter of preference. Should that preference ever change I have no doubt that you could have young men falling at your feet for your smile and your whimsical humour in a heartbeat. Of course they would have to be the very best mankind has to offer and make you deliriously happy if I wasn't to disapprove of them myself!

I wish I could make all of this make sense for you, but one thing I can say with complete certainty is that although you might not have your memories, you _do_ have yourself. The Delia I knew in Poplar is exactly the same as the one who writes me letters every week – a bold, sunny darling of a girl who is wonderful fun and always knows how to make me smile. Mothers are marvellous creatures in many ways, but they are not all seeing and they certainly aren't all knowing. I think we often close off certain parts of ourselves from the people who care about us because rightly or wrongly we think it would hurt them to know everything, and perhaps you had good reason for neglecting to mention certain things to your mother (reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with being a criminal or a thug!).  
This is really something that you would have been much better equipped to offer advice on than I am... but I think you should trust what you feel. You never were a fan of facades and this is no different. Your mother may be surprised to find that you are a real person and not some idealized cut out paper doll daughter, but who you are is beautiful and nothing to be ashamed of, so don't be afraid to let yourself be who you are.

Please do keep the photo! I only wish I had had a better one to send you, I'm afraid I look terribly stern and 'nurse Mount'-ish in that one. Although perhaps it would help to know that while I might _look_ serene enough, barely a second after I sat down for the photographer that day I realized that there was a particularly large spider crawling up my leg under the hem of my skirt. Now I am not one to take fright at insects as a rule, but there are certain places one simply does not want to find creepy crawlies, and inside one's brand new uniform is one of them (especially when the discovery is made whilst wearing said uniform!). The only thing that kept me from jumping up and shaking the little beast out before it could reach the top of my stocking was the fear that I would forever be known as the nurse whose staff photo showed a monstrous grimace and more leg than would be seemly (they had been rather strict about do-overs and the girl before me in the queue was caught just at the beginning of a sneeze. The poor thing spent 3 years with a photograph with her eyes scrunched up and her mouth hanging open, and I had no desire to join her for the sake of a spider!), so what you are really seeing in that picture is the face of someone sitting still through unbearable tickling and trying very hard not to squeal like a child!

As to your questions, my full name is Patience Elizabeth Mount, and as you have probably deduced from my earlier comments, I was not always a midwife. I trained as a nurse as soon as I left school, but I have worked in various different sectors. The three years on the male surgical ward I have already mentioned, but I did a year in psychiatrics too (so I can tell you with some authority that you, Delia Busby, are perfectly sane). I am not a born Londoner. In fact, I only came here when I started my nurse's training (because I was told The London was the place to be for anyone wanting to get ahead in nursing). I was actually born in Shanghai, although I spent many of my formative years in a terribly English catholic boarding school (I'm not catholic myself and… this bit is a secret… I am still a little nervous of catholic nuns; they were so terribly forbidding and make me feel instantly like a school girl in disgrace even now). Now what else can I tell you? I prefer haddock over cod with my chips, I can write as well with my left hand as my right and I once did a dozen cartwheels in a row without stopping (alas that is a skill that rather loses its usefulness once the days of school gymnastics are behind one).

You asked for stories of Poplar. Well, we have all been feeling a little dull here recently thanks to the constant rain (nothing quite matches the feeling of putting on cold, wet shoes because they simply haven't had a chance to dry since the last time they were soaked by puddles). We might have had a week of early nights and hot water bottles with no japes at all to speak of if it hadn't been for Barbara and her clever ideas. I don't know what made her think to do it, but Trixie and I arrived back in our room after a particularly exhausting delivery of triplets (triplets! I feel for the poor parents trying to care for three newborns all at once, with only two hands apiece!) to discover that it had been turned into a tropical paradise. Barbara had dug out some yellow and blue fabric from the scrap bags and draped it artfully around the room to look like sea and sand, then somehow managed to haul three deckchairs up the stairs and arranged them in the space between our beds. The moment we walked in the door we were greeted by 'oh I do like to be beside the seaside' on the record player, a decorative collection of shells and beach pebbles arranged on every surface and Barbara looking a little sheepish and dressed in beachwear (including the most enormous straw hat and what looked like a smudge of sunscreen on her nose).

For a moment or two Trixie and I couldn't do anything but stare - it felt rather as though we had just fallen through the looking glass into Wonderland! But after the initial shock it didn't take us long to get on board and within minutes we were all stretched out in deck chairs with our feel paddling in basins of warm water (pretending we were bathing them in a tropical ocean, of course), slathering sunscreen on our arms and cheeks (I was confused about that at first too, but as Barbara put it: 'it makes it _smell_ like summer if you're wearing sunscreen, and what's the good in pretending if it still smells like our bedroom in winter instead of the beach in the height of summer?').

Somehow Barbara had gotten hold of three strawberry splits (where on earth does one buy ice creams in the middle of December?), so rather than bournvita and crumpets we drank warm orange squash with little paper umbrellas in and ate ice creams in our swimsuits (and cardigans, as there is only so far pretence can take one from the frozen fog outside). We had almost forgotten that it was really a winter night in London and not a summer afternoon at the seaside when Nurse Crane poked her head round the door to ask to borrow my dictionary. Oh Deels, you should have seen her face! She was so shocked she just stood in the doorway and opened and closed her mouth for nearly a full minute without saying a word, as though she was trying to figure out if she was really awake or not. I half wanted to ask her if she'd like to bring her beach towel and join us, but Nurse Crane is rather formidable and terribly proper so I can't imagine her wanting to play games with us foolish young things. Eventually she said something about the boundless energy and bizarre imaginations of youth and left without the dictionary. It certainly cured our winter blues and Trixie says she feels it almost gave her a tan!

I do so hope you are well and happy this week, and that somehow you are enjoying stolen summer days as well!

Love,

Patsy

... ... ...

 _Dearest Delia,_

 _Writing to you is getting dangerous. I have to read and reread every line to make sure I'm not saying too much, and even so I am afraid that my hints are too strong. You sound so much like your old self that I keep forgetting that you don't know what we shared. Part of me (perhaps most of me) wants to simply tell you everything and hang the consequences. Do you know in my last letter I started to do just that half a dozen times or more: "the reason I don't have a boyfriend is because I have something better. I am in love with YOU Delia, and until a car took your memories you loved me as well" or "I am what you were hiding from your mother in your letters. You weren't a criminal or a saint, just a bright, brave, wonderful girl who loved in a way that the world won't accept". I hope what I wrote instead will give you enough reassurance that you are someone worth remembering. It breaks my heart that you think there's something wrong with who you are._

 _If our places were reversed, would you tell me? I feel you might. But you have always been so much braver than I am. You are the girl who would tell a man boldly to leave us alone because we don't like 'cake' (part of me still can't believe you said that) and who lets her hand linger for a heart pounding moment longer than strictly necessary on my shoulder as you pass my chair in a cafe. You are the girl who dreamt of changing a world that refused to give us space to be ourselves in it rather than allowing yourself to be crushed into a shape it thought proper._

 _You told me that I deal better with facades than you do, but the truth is Delia that I was just too afraid of losing you completely to let my feelings show. I have spent so much of my life pretending to be normal and cheerful and unaffected by everything around me that trying to simply be myself feels like going into battle without armour. And yet now here I am pouring my heart out in a way I couldn't have imagined even as much as a year ago (and to be frank might well have looked on with a little scorn, for I was ever the practical minded nurse before all else). Maybe if I told you the truth it really would be alright, your own letter held enough hints that you might still have feelings for me that it isn't a completely futile hope (you think me pretty and keep my picture by your bed!). But how can I risk what we do have on a selfish wish for more? I would rather be in your life as a friend than lose you altogether. It would kill me if you were disgusted by my feelings, and how could I make you lose this one link to your life before by turning it into something that may now seem ugly to you? Oh Delia, I can't bear that thought. What if our love seems sordid and unnatural to you now?_

 _You write that you are afraid. Well Deels, here's a secret (and these are words I haven't freely acknowledged about myself since I was nine years old). I am afraid too. So afraid. Please don't hate me, if you work it out. Please._

 _All my love,_

 _Patsy_


	11. Chapter 11

AN: if you speak French you will probably notice that Delia has made a few mistakes in spelling/grammar - they are deliberate as she hasn't studied French since school and doesn't remember everything! I'll include a translation of what she was intending to say at the bottom for those who are interested :)

* * *

Dear Patsy,

Your letter was perfect (as always!). It makes me so glad to know all those little details about you; they feel like things a friend _should_ know and it makes me feel nearer to you, as if I might step outside one morning and see you going by with your midwife's bag on your way to the clinic. In fact I feel now as if I am enough of an expert that I could write one of those French vocabulary exercises we were always doing in school on the subject of 'my best friend'. You know the kind of thing? Something like this:

Ma meileur amie s'appelle Patience Elizabeth Mount mais j'appelle ses Pats. Elle est très gentille et jolie, mais elle n'a pas un petit ami parce que garçons ne sont aucon amusement. Elle aime la gymnastique et le haddock (what is the french word for haddock? should it be l'haddock? do they even eat haddock in France? Now I've started I realize I always was dreadful at French!) avec des frites, mais elle me aime mieux parce que je suis sa petite amie impertinente préférée!

I rather hope you aren't much good at French either or you'll notice how many mistakes I made there! (maybe they teach Latin instead in catholic school? Or do they teach both?). If I handed that in as homework to the French mistress I would be sure to get lots of cross corrections and a 'Delia needs to stop daydreaming and work harder on her French lessons' in my school report! Even so, I hope it will make you smile and go some way towards making up for how I embarrassed myself in my last letter. I am sorry I went on as though you having a boyfriend was such a certainty! I suppose I just thought you too lovely to possibly be unattached. Now I think on it though, I can't picture a man special enough to do you justice so it makes sense that you'd be single.  
Oh dear, I'm afraid I'm just digging myself in deeper now and I don't know how to make it better! Maybe I should move on from boyfriends altogether? If I go on and pretend I never brought up the subject in the first place I imagine you will be tactful enough to allow my indiscretion to pass without feeling too cross with me.

Actually Pats, there was something I really wanted to share with you, but it's a secret - you mustn't tell mam! Will you promise? It would only disappoint her if nothing comes of it and I can't stand it when she gives me that reproachful look of hers (it's the same one she gave me when I knocked over a jug of milk or tore a new dress as a little girl, and although she might not be as scary as a Catholic School nun it still makes me squirm. Just yesterday I found myself looking down and scuffing my shoe against the floor exactly like a child in disgrace in spite of my age, all because she discovered I had mended a blue shirt with white thread instead of matching it!).

Well, I'll just assume you promised and tell you anyway. You see, the thing is… I think I've started remembering things in my dreams. Mostly it's just little things, like the smell of bleach or a song on a jukebox (the rest of the detail slips away as soon as I open my eyes), but every time I wake up from one of those dreams I feel a little more like I know who Delia Busby is. There's nothing I could point to and say 'that's what happened', but I think one day there might be. I hope so as I would _so_ like to remember you and all the things we did together in London! But I'm afraid that I'm simply wanting it so hard that I'm making things up. It's so difficult to be sure of what is truly memory when I imagine a thousand scenes a day of what my life might have been like. I've been trying to recall the accident and work backwards, but apart from a few indistinct impressions of the hospital I might never have been to London at all. I know these dreams are a small thing to pin hopes on when mostly it's all still such a fog, but it's something isn't it?

While I'm confessing things to you, I might as well admit to all of it. Mam still doesn't want me going anywhere without her, but we are both so cooped up that we are beginning to fray each other's nerves. I think we have lived independently of each other for so long that getting used to a full time mother-child, carer-invalid relationship is not at all easy (especially now that I am physically well and not nearly as mentally feeble as she seems to believe). So I snuck out. It was all rather thrilling actually, it felt just like a scene from Romeo and Juliet (or at least the way Romeo and Juliet would be if there was no Romeo and Juliet was a bored amnesiac looking for a forbidden taste of freedom instead of a tryst with a boy. Not so _very_ like it now I come to think about it... but that's Shakespeare's fault really. _I_ can't help it if he never wrote a play about amnesia!). I told mam I was going for a lie down for an hour before supper then slipped out through the back door while she was busy in the parlour. The end of our garden is only separated from the woods and fields behind it by a low wooden fence and the little stream I told you about before, so it is very easy to get over and circle back round to the street. Oh Pats, the relief of it! Even breathing feels different when there's no one watching to make sure you aren't about to stop.

I didn't go far, only up to the woods to see where the bluebells will grow in summer and then to the village for a bag of peppermint creams, but it felt so good to be free for just a little while that I think I went a touch crazy. I had to pass the railway line to get back home, and I can't tell you how close I was to getting on a train bound for London and coming to surprise you. For a few minutes I felt such a thrill at my own (dubious) cleverness that I forgot all about how frantic mam would have been, or how inconvenient it would be for you if I really did show up on your doorstep with nowhere to stay and nothing to my name but the stubb of a train ticket and a bag of peppermint creams. I even got as far as asking about fares at the ticket office (it seemed such a wonderful idea at the time!) but then the man at the desk asked which station I wanted and I realized that not only was the three and six in my pocket unlikely to be enough to get me all the way to Nonnatus House and back, I also had no idea which station would bring me closest to Poplar. London is so very big and I am really rather small. So of course I came home again and was back in my room like a good little patient by the time mam came upstairs to check on me (I know I know, you needn't tell me - I am a terrible patient. As a nurse you must be horrified by my disobedient antics! For all that though, I can't quite make myself be sorry I did it).

I know I should be grateful to even be alive, but I want to be well NOW Pats. I want to live with friends in London and be a nurse and have beach parties in my bedroom in the middle of winter. I want to eat haddock and chips. I want to teach the cubs everything they have ever wanted to know about blood and then I want to go dancing with you until after curfew, so I have to climb back into the nurses' home through a friend's bedroom window (or better yet live somewhere that has no curfew at all, where we can dance or talk all night if we want to). And I want to believe that one day I'll look back and this part of my life will be nothing more than a brief pause between greater things, because the taste of those peppermint creams is still lingering on my tongue like freedom and staying this way forever doesn't feel like an option.

With love,

Your petulant, impatient, impertinent

Delia

* * *

 _Translation: My best friend is called Patience Elizabeth Mount, but I call her Pats. She is very kind and pretty, but she doesn't have a boyfriend because boys are no fun. she loves gymnastics and haddock with chips, but she likes me better because I am her favourite impertinent little friend!_


	12. Chapter 12

Dear Delia,

I'm afraid my knowledge of French names for fish goes no further than 'poisson' these days, and don't get me started on Latin! Ghastly language and the learning of it doesn't help you converse with anyone but priests (and even then I always had my suspicions that half of them don't actually understand a word they're saying). I have always felt that if one _must_ struggle through the business of learning another language it ought at least to be one that might be of some future use and not merely something to be catalogued as part of a proper education for a young lady. But then languages never were quite my forte, so I am terribly impressed by your essay (and utterly tickled that you wrote it for me!). As to the other, think nothing of the business of boyfriends (I assure you I never do), you haven't embarrassed yourself at all. I have never been the least bit cross with you and I am sure I never could be, you are simply too goodhearted to really be angry with.

I completely understand your frustration Deels, but I'm not sure you realize quite how far you have come since you left the hospital. When I first wrote (and remember this was only a few weeks ago) you couldn't so much as read the letter for yourself let alone write back, and your mother told me she had feared she would never see you laugh again (at least until a cat in sock bandages worked its magic). At that time the whole world was strange to you and now… Delia, the dreams are wonderful news and definitely worth feeling hopeful over (when I read your letter I think I might actually have exclaimed out loud with excitement), but they aren't the only sign of your memory returning. Tell me sweetheart, if you aren't regaining your memories at all, however did you know what look your mother gave you when you were in disgrace as a little girl? How did you know of your French mistress, or the fact that you weren't top of every language class? The way you spoke of those things didn't sound like someone who was just repeating something they had been told about their past, they sounded like your own memories. Otherwise how on earth could your mother's expression have any effect on you now? Perhaps you've simply been going about the whole thing the wrong way round? Starting from the end rather than the beginning? I might be wrong, but it does seem like your old memories are coming along beautifully.

I imagine you were a delightful little thing as a child and quite the one for mischief. It's a shame we didn't know each other as girls (although I wouldn't put you through Catholic boarding school for the world), I think I could have done with a chum like you at school! I was always just a tad too well behaved when I was young and a spot of mischief could have made me a far more agreeable creature. If nothing else I suspect that you could have given me stiff competition when it came to fencing (and that's no small claim as I was the only girl in my school ever to beat Mother Gertrude – another little snippet of Patsy Mount knowledge for your collection!). I'm not sure you ever _did_ fence in reality, but I can picture you deceiving everyone with your tiny size and charming sweet nature then having us all tripping over our feet with your fearsome remise!

I dare say it would be an awful fright to your mother if you disappeared off to London and I would hate for you to get lost (it really is a terribly big city) but for myself I would never consider it an inconvenience to see you, no matter what the circumstances. You mustn't ever think you are anything less than welcome with me Delia, even if we had to top and tail in my little convent bed! (and of course if you brought peppermint creams so much the better!). But perhaps for the time being it would be better if I were to visit you, should you feel the desire for company again? After all your mother would never let me write again if she thought for a moment that I had encouraged you to run off without so much as a toothbrush or a shilling to spare in your pocket, and although _you_ might like the idea of being disapproved of I think on balance it would be much better for me to keep your mother's good graces if at all possible. I don't fancy writing under an assumed name!

Not long now until Christmas is with us. I like to think of you having a charmingly traditional family Christmas, hanging a stocking over the fire place and sitting down to turkey and roast potatoes (but perhaps not sprouts) wearing a paper crown from your cracker. Do you have a tree up yet? Fred brought ours in this week and we had quite the song and dance over it. Never one to do things by halves he decided that in honour of his first Christmas with Violet bigger would be better (I suspect his lady wife refused to allow it in their own home so Fred decided we were the next best thing). Poor Sister Winifred opened the door after breakfast to find herself confronted by what must have seemed to be half a forest. It appears as though our Alice in Wonderland parallels are set to continue undeterred even now we have dismantled the beach scene in our bedroom, for now every time I step into the parlour I feel like Alice after she takes a bite of magic cake and finds herself no bigger than a mouse. The tree reaches very nearly to the ceiling (which certainly isn't low) and we've all had to set to on the hobby crafts, making extra paper chains and baubles just to have a hope of decorating the whole thing. Sister Evangelina was most displeased when she saw it, she says having such a large tree makes a mockery of the Sisters' vow of poverty, and Sister Monica Joan added something about unseemly proportions that could almost have been construed as vulgar innuendo had it not come from a nun! Trixie and I had to try very hard not to look at one another when she said that or we would have burst into a most inappropriate fit of giggles, which could only have made things worse! One never knows with Sister Monica Joan whether she realizes what she's saying at times like this, but if the twinkle in her eye on this occasion is anything to go by, I rather think she did.

The Cubs have been practising hard for their part in the Christmas concert. They rather fancied pantomime, but we feared it might get a little too raucous for a church festival, especially when Steven (the little scamp) suggested we turn the _nativity_ into a panto. Can you imagine it? The holy birth of Jesus with the Virgin Mary as a pantomime Dame and all the animals shouting 'he's behind you!' When the Angel Gabriel descends from heaven? Actually, don't tell Steven I said so but I thought it sounded like rather good fun! Does that make me dreadful? Of course we will not be performing such sacrilege (the nuns would never forgive me for allowing it), but a nice rendition of 'A Christmas Carol' should do equally well. Steven was consoled with the part of Scrooge and is in fine fettle stomping about the stage shouting 'Bah Humbug' in his best crotchety old man voice. Apparently it is suspiciously similar in mannerism to the headmaster of the boy's grammar school, which the cubs naturally find hilarious but that I fear may be storing up trouble for later, should the headmaster be given to attending such functions. Still, there is almost a week left to perfect the show and I might yet be able to convince the lads to tone down their tricks for the sake of a peaceful Christmas and the avoidance of a lump of coal in their stockings.

I do hope your week has been a marvellous one and that you've been able to get out and about without recourse to trickery!

Love,

Patsy

... ... ...

 _Dearest Delia,_

 _I know you were translating literally, but you called yourself my 'petite amie'. Directly it might mean little friend but I have retained enough from my school days to know that to the French, that means girlfriend. Oh I know it's silly to quibble over semantics when it was plainly unintentional on your part, but even so seeing it written there in your own handwriting makes me feel bright with joy. My 'petite amie impertinente'._

 _I think you'd be proud of me now Deels, if you knew. I am getting more daring in my letters to you, though it makes my heart pound and my palms sweat with fear at my own audacity. Every week I spend the days between sending my letter and receiving yours feeling a little bit afraid that you won't reply, or that I will receive a short, formal note telling me that my attentions are no longer welcome and that I should seek God's forgiveness for my sinful nature (that's the influence of catholic school coming through again). But every week I find that not only were my fears groundless, your own letters give increasing cause to believe that there is hope. Besides, you are being so honest with me when you write; I want to return as much of the favour as I can and let you know that you are cherished._

 _And your dreams Delia. The sensible part of me knows that you dream of bleach because you're a nurse and goodness knows you spend enough of your time in places that smell of the stuff, but even so I can't help hearing your words in my head from that last glorious, awful day we spent together. "I want to smell coffee when I wake up in the morning. And bleach, because that will mean that you're there, or that you've just left. And when you come back in I can say 'welcome home'". It gives me the strength (or perhaps encourages the weakness) to hope that one day I will be able to say those words to you, and have you know them in all their shades of meaning. There can be no more joyful sentence in the world than that one. Welcome home Delia._

 _One day._

 _All my love,_

 _Patsy_


	13. Chapter 13

Dear Patsy,

When I was three years old, I went missing for nearly four hours. My aunt and uncle had taken me and my two big cousins out to the next town over where a fair was visiting and they were all trying their luck on the ring toss. I was too small to see over the counter or to have any interest in getting a ring over some old lamp, so I was watching all the legs go by and waiting to be taken on the merry go round when I saw it.

Some other child had lost their balloon and it was skittering past, trailing its string like a fishing line to lure me in. It was the biggest, reddest, loveliest thing I had seen in all my little life and I was sure I had never wanted anything more. Well of course, I ran off after it into the crowd and thought of nothing else until I had caught its string in my hand and wrapped my chubby little baby arms around its plump rubbery roundness. I can still feel the firm bounciness of that balloon in my arms and how happy it made me. I named it Susan and decided I would keep it forever and ever.

Then I looked up and realized I couldn't see the ring toss stall, or my big cousins, or my aunt and uncle. Looking back, I probably wasn't really all that far away from them, but from the perspective of a three year old I might as well have been in another world altogether. I should have been scared, a little baby alone among all the noise and clamour of a world several sizes too big for me, but I wasn't. It never occurred to me that even if _I_ wasn't afraid, my aunt and uncle might be when they looked round and discovered my disappearance, so I didn't stop to think about what _they_ might want me to do. I decided Susan and I would go exploring. Somehow I found my way to the fortune teller's tent and crawled in at the back. It was quite dark, except for a pair of old fashioned oil lamps, and it smelled of lavender and cocoa. I listened to four fortunes before the lady spotted me there, playing with the tassels on her satin cushions as if I had every right to be in her tent. I really _was_ a bit frightened then, because I knew perfectly well that grown ups don't like it when children sneak in to listen to their conversations. But she wasn't cross, she just took my hand and led me out to a circle of caravans where the fair people lived and they gave me cold boiled eggs and gingerbread and lemonade that made me sneeze. I tried to give some to Susan as well but she just got sticky and the Strong Man had to help me wash her in his little caravan sink.

I'm sure while all this was going on my aunt and uncle were beside themselves with worry and no doubt while they were keeping me safely entertained the fair people were putting word out that they had found a little dark haired girl in blue gingham, but all I knew of it was that when my aunt and uncle _did_ come to take me away I cried, because the candy floss lady had promised to show me how to make all the little wispy bits spin together on the stick and become a lovely giant ball of pink sugar (like a fluffy sister for Susan!) and now I would never know.  
After that I wanted to work on a fairground right up until I saw the nurses in their uniforms during the war and realized that a tent that smelled like cocoa and lavender was all very well, but I wanted to be part of real life, helping people in pain and being part of something better even than roundabouts and ring tosses (but to this day I'd still like to know how to spin candy floss!).

When I was eight I made friends with an old man (or perhaps he only seemed so through my young eyes) who had lost an ear, an eye and a good bit of the right side of his face in the early days of the first war. I used to see him in his little front garden on my way home from school, digging in potato beds and drinking cold tea out of a flask. I'm not sure quite how it began, but I started pausing to watch him on my way by. Most of the children were afraid of him because of his grizzly scars, but by this point I was in love with the idea of nursing and thought little of his old injuries. He always looked so lonely out there with nothing but his vegetables for company (I found out later his wife had died a year before of something that sounded, though I had no name for it then, like diphtheria). So I started picking wild flowers from the roadside and decorating his gate with them so when he next came out he would see some colour instead of just dull, muddy beds. When mam made a cake for a special treat I slipped my piece into my school satchel and left it on his doorstep wrapped in newspaper.

Then one day I found a kitten. It was a tiny little thing that looked as if it had been attacked by some bigger animal and abandoned. Its ear was ragged and it had a toe missing from its back paw, and I wanted that kitten even more than I had wanted Susan when I was a little toddler at the fair. I kept it for two weeks in our shed, secretly tending its ear and feeding it stolen scraps when I could get them or snails and earthworms when I couldn't. Somehow the little thing survived my inexperienced ministrations and got better, but it didn't like being shut up in a shed (now I know how it feels!) and mam wouldn't let me bring it into the house. She wanted me to drive it away, she said it was giving me fleas and with rationing the luxury of a cat would be a foolish indulgence, but I couldn't bring myself frighten the poor little thing off, so I took her to the one place I knew where the need for company was surely greater than the privation of rationing.

I had never even spoken to the old man before, just left my little gifts in secret, but that day I marched right up to the front door with the cat in my arms and knocked. I told him that the cat needed someone to care for it and I thought maybe he did too, so perhaps they could look after each other. I think that was the first time I ever saw a grown up man cry, but he did. After that he'd always find a little something for me when he saw me in the lane – the first apple from his tree or a bit of barley sugar or a drawing he'd done of his cat for me, sleek and happy and sleeping by the fire. On my birthday he sent be a big box of real chocolates, tied with a satiny yellow ribbon. That would be a nice gift now, but remember this was during rationing, so it was an almost unbelievable luxury to give to a child.  
He moved to Cardiff a few months later to be near his only remaining daughter and his new grandson, but he took the cat with him, and he left me the china doll that had been his daughter's when she was a little girl (do you remember I told you of her? The one with ringlets and a crinoline that sits on my windowsill?). I named her Gladys, after that other little girl who had once loved her.

What I'm trying to tell you is you were right Pats. Since I read your letter I stopped focusing on the part of my life that's just happened and started thinking about when I was a little girl, and you were right. More and more of it is coming back. I remember losing my first wobbly tooth in an apple and being scared to keep eating it in case it bit back. I remember the day I fell off the roof at school and sprained my ankle because Dylan Jones bet I couldn't climb as high as a boy (but _he_ got too scared to keep going half way up and had to be rescued by the head master with a ladder). There are still plenty of gaps, and I haven't managed anything at all above the age of about twelve yet, but it is so much more than I had before. I'm sorry if I've bored you with my long rambling stories of naughty little Delia and her antics, it's just such a relief to have stories to tell again. I hope you don't mind.

Oh Patsy! Would you really come and visit me? I'd love that so much! We must arrange a date in the new year. I'm afraid it might seem a little dull to you here after London, but I can show you what charms there are to be seen here and maybe you'd enjoy swapping buildings and smog for hills and river mist for a little while? I'm sure if you were with me mam wouldn't object to me going further afield either. You are a trained nurse after all; she could hardly say I wouldn't be safe in your company if I had a seizure! (though I haven't had one for some time now so it isn't likely). Oh Pats, We could get the train to the seaside! How does fish and chips on the pier sound? Or a show in Cardiff? Anything you like, you pick! I do hope you weren't just mollifying me with this idea of a visit because I am quite taken with it! Do say you will Pats!

Everyone here is getting ready for Christmas too. The church has set up a little stable scene all surrounded by candles and holly boughs and people can bring toys to leave at the foot of the manger (which will eventually be donated to give poor children something to look forward to on Christmas day). I went to see it last Sunday and it's all ever so pretty. There's a great Christmas tree up in the village square too and every time I see it it makes me think of the one you have in Nonnatus house. I keep imagining this great big outdoor tree there in your little parlour, filling up the whole room so you all have to squeeze round the edges to get from one room to another (I know it isn't really as big as all that, but it amuses me to imagine it so!). Mam couldn't understand why on earth I was giggling at a tree and somehow I couldn't explain exactly what was funny ('because of Alice in wonderland' didn't seem to tickle her as it did me!).

I so wish I could see the Cub's play! I always liked a Christmas carol, and Steven's take on Scrooge sounds thoroughly entertaining! I almost hope you _don't_ manage to get him to stop his impersonation because it sounds such fun! But I suppose it would be a shame if anyone was made to feel too cross at a Christmas show, even a crotchety old headmaster. I don't think you the least bit dreadful, I would love to see the nativity pantomime! 'For lo, is born the Son of God!' 'Oh no he isn't!' 'OH YES HE IS!'. I wonder if I will ever see the nativity again without being a little disappointed when that doesn't happen? I'm sure the nuns wouldn't hate you for it! From what you've told me of Sister Monica Joan she might be right there at the front clapping along! (Especially if we had cake for the interval). Oh dear, maybe it is for the best that I'm not there, I might be a little too tempted to let the boys convince me to do it for real! I think perhaps having no memories yet but those from childhood is making me a little more sympathetic to childish tricks than I ought to be at the age of 24. It's as though part of me is still ten years old because that's where my memories are.

I have almost finished your Christmas present now Pats. I'm going to send it to you in a day or two to make sure you have it in time, but you must promise not to open the parcel until Christmas morning (shall we say at 7.30am?). That way I can think of you just when you're opening it and imagine your reaction, and it will be almost as though I'm there to give it to you myself. I'd like that.

Love,

Delia


	14. Chapter 14

Dear Delia,

I can't remember when I've heard better news! Oh Deels I am so, _so_ happy for you! It is a wonderful sign that it's all coming back so clearly. What does the Doctor say about it? I'm afraid I don't know as much as I could about recovery from amnesia, but regaining these memories must be a good indicator that the rest could come back soon too? Thank you so much for sharing those stories with me, I loved reading about your adventures as a little girl. You have told me before in passing that you were lost at a fair once and that the people who worked there were so kind to you that you hadn't wanted to go home (you were trying to entice me to take the train to visit a fair with you in Brighton at the time!), but I didn't know about Susan, or that you had wanted to work at a fairground because of the candy floss! If I were any kind of an artist I think I might be tempted to paint the image of a small dark haired girl in blue gingham, smiling unconcernedly and hugging a big red balloon in the middle of a busy fairground as if her heart's truest desire had been realized. I would call the painting 'Susan' and everyone but you and I would think it was named for the child! Do you remember how long you kept that balloon after you left the fair? I don't suppose you still have its remnants tucked away somewhere. Alas 'forever and ever' to a three year old is rarely as long as we expect it to be. But perhaps that is for the best or I for one would be eating nothing but bread and butter pudding to this day, as I asserted after a particularly delicious serving as a toddler that I was going to eat only 'nana's bed and butty puddim' forever and ever (I know, who would have guessed that my younger self would have such dreadful diction? But alas, it was so).

Of course I meant it when I said I would visit, I would like nothing better! I actually asked your mother in the hospital if I might be allowed to come and see you now and again, but at the time you were so unwell and the shock so fresh that I don't think she liked the thought of having well meaning friends cluttering up the place and she rather discouraged the idea. After that I didn't want to push, but if you want me to come there is nothing on Earth that could stop me. A trip to the seaside sounds utterly delightful but if it's too much you needn't concern yourself about entertaining me. I would be just as happy planting tulip bulbs in your garden or even just sliding round your bedroom floor in stockings and going for short walks down to the village. I don't mind a bit what we do as I shall be there simply to see you and one way or another, whatever we set out to do we always have a splendid time. If you let me know what dates would suit you best I will talk to Sister Julienne about getting a few days leave. I'm not sure when I last took a holiday and I have never been to Wales, so it's all rather exciting! Ought I to write to your mother and ask her permission to come though? I would hate to make her feel I had forced my way in against her wishes, especially after I asked and was turned down by her once before, even if that was in the immediate aftermath of your injury. If she isn't happy with the idea of a house guest I'm sure I could find a boarding house somewhere not too far away so that we might have day visits at least?

The Christmas concert went swimmingly. The girls' brigade had been working very hard to get their band up to snuff and they acquitted themselves beautifully in their piece. We were all left speechless and Sister Mary Cynthia (who remembers having to encourage the girl even to speak in public a year or two ago) teared up a little when a shy young lady named Sheryl surprised us all with an achingly beautiful solo of 'silent night'. Then there was a sermon of course, with Mrs Turner and her community choir leading the hymns, and then it was our turn. We very nearly had a disaster on our hands even after I managed to get Steven's solemn oath that he would not play Scrooge as Mr Larson (the headmaster I mentioned before).

Do you remember Alfie, the boy I told you about who sat on his camera during the pinhole session we did a few weeks ago? Well it seems he really is extremely accident prone (or perhaps he is in the midst of another growth spurt and it's making him uncoordinated) because just three days before we were due to perform he took a tumble down a flight of stairs and fractured his tibia! (You needn't worry as he's quite alright now and is rather enjoying the status his cast gives him). He was meant to be the ghost of Christmas yet to come, but we felt it might rather detract from his ominous presence to have him limping along in plaster as he showed Scrooge the doom he was inviting on himself. We had to have a last minute cast shuffle so that Alfie could be Tiny Tim - that way the crutches would be entirely in keeping with his character. This would have been a perfect solution if it weren't for the fact that Alfie is a robust and hearty lad and rather taller than the boy playing his father, so all the mentions of poor, frail (and above all LITTLE) Tiny Tim took on a rather comic air. Still, the boys all remembered their lines in spite of the short notice changes and at the end of the show one or two people told us how much they enjoyed the comedy aspect, so of course we all just smiled along and pretended the casting had been done that way deliberately!

Your parcel arrived safely and I have put it away ready for Christmas morning as you asked (though it took a great deal of self control as I am as excited as a child about it!). I will open it at 7.30 on the dot, and perhaps you could open yours from me at the same time? I'm not sure what your family tradition is on Christmas morning, but hopefully you'll be able to take a few minutes at that time. Trixie, Barbara and I have agreed to have our own little family Christmas morning together, but I have made sure that it won't begin until 8am so you and I can exchange our Christmas presents first. That way it won't get lost in all the hullabaloo that is bound to ensue when Barbara bounces in in her pyjamas like a child coming to tell her parents it's Christmas day! Trixie and I have been putting our heads together the last few days to come up with ways to make the holiday special for her as we're afraid she may feel rather sad and homesick otherwise. There tends to be quite the religious focus here at Nonnatus House for the rest of the occupants (they are nuns after all, so what can one expect?) so it can be quite a solemn occasion if we let it (at least until Christmas dinner when everyone is in a more celebratory mood) and although Barbara comes from a church family and must be used to that, she has also been telling us all sorts of stories about the little family traditions she has back home. She was supposed to be going to spend the holidays with her family in Liverpool, but she just received word from her father saying there has been an outbreak of scarlet fever and she should stay away to avoid bringing it back to the newborns of Poplar, so the poor girl has found herself at a bit of a loose end.

The day she got the letter telling her not to come home I found her sitting on the steps looking utterly woebegone and as though she might be about to shed a tear or two. She told me about how her father still has her write a letter to Santa Claus and send it up the chimney the way he had done when he was a little boy, because he says someone who does so much for others as she does ought to send a little wish for herself heavenward at this time of year, and how he still makes sure she has a stocking to wake up to on Christmas morning even now she's grown up. She made all the games and laughter of the morning sound so jolly that it rather made me want to be a part of it too. Trixie and I are old hands at Christmas spent away from the trappings of childhood, but as this will be Barbara's first Christmas away from her family I feel almost maternal towards her over it and have been planning to recreate the experience for her as best I can.

So last night I brought out paper and pens and told Trixie and Barbara we were going to write our Christmas letters to Santa. Trixie was a little bemused at first, but I think she understood when she saw the look on Barbara's face and after that she joined in gamely enough. It wasn't so much the activity itself after all, but the family feeling behind it and the fact that we were doing it to give Christmas to a friend who had thought she was going to miss out (and really, after having a beach party in December simply writing letters to a magical wish granter from the North Pole seems tame by comparison!). We had a whale of a time coming up with preposterous Christmas wishes and when Sister Monica Joan saw what we were doing she showed us the trick she learnt as a girl to create a draft that would ensure the letters went straight up the chimney (and so directly into the hands of jolly old St Nick) instead of catching in the flames and being burned away.

In spite of the fire trick I have decided to not to rely solely on our letters to bring about a merry Christmas morning and am over at the Noakes' house this evening, watching little Freddie while Chummy and Sergeant Noakes go out to the cinema in exchange for the use of Chummy's Singer (we do have a sewing machine at Nonnatus but I wanted this to be a surprise). I'm afraid I will never win any awards for my sewing, but I can manage well enough to piece together a couple of big stocking shapes out of red felt and I had fun earlier today going round the market choosing little presents to fill them for Trixie and Babs. We never really had big family Christmases when I was a girl so I am rather enjoying putting the extra effort in to planning this one, especially as the unexpected lull in both the number of women going into labour and medical disasters to be dealt with has left me with rather more energy and time than I am used to!

I do hope you'll like your gifts Deels, I'm sending the parcel along with this letter all ready for Christmas. The package on top is your present from the nuns, but it will be best fresh so you might want to open that one right away rather than waiting for Sunday. The rest should be perfectly safe to be kept though, and I made sure that all the parcels in the box are individually wrapped and labelled with the name of their sender, so if you want to you can take them out and put them under a tree or at the foot of your bed (wherever you feel best to display them).

Merry Christmas Delia!

Love,  
Patsy

... ... ...

 _Dearest Delia,_

 _It's really true. You remember. Not me, perhaps, but even so you are really, truly regaining your memories! In spite of everything else as the weeks have gone by I have been so afraid this would never happen; that you would never know all of yourself again. It's lucky that I've gotten into a routine of opening your letters when I am alone because reading this one I couldn't stop myself from sobbing. I feel as though a dam has burst in my chest and all the fear and sadness I have been storing up seemed determined to flood its way out through my eyes with the relief of your letter. It has left me feeling raw and shaky, but I can't contain the hope I feel anymore that perhaps what we once had is in reach again._

 _Trixie came into the room while I was still a bit red eyed and I was terrified that she would start asking awkward questions (how on Earth could I explain why I was so emotional over your story of balloons and gardeners after all?) but she didn't ask, just glanced from my face to the letter in my hand then quietly came to sit beside me and gave me her handkerchief. We stayed that way for what seemed like a long time, her with her arm around me and her head on my shoulder while I pulled myself together, but even when I was back in control she didn't ask why I was crying, just gave me a little nod and said 'that's better old thing, big smiles. It will all be alright you know. And if it's not… you can talk to me. It won't change anything if… well, I'm your friend Patsy, and you can talk to me, that's all'. Perhaps she saw my fearful look, or perhaps I was simply reading more into her words that she intended, but a moment later it was as though it had never happened and Trixie was her usual self again, talking about a new dress she was simply dying to find an excuse to buy and discussing the newest styles in Vogue. I never realized quite how much of a brave face Trixie puts on, but I think she wears glamour girl image the same way I do my 'Nurse Mount' one. We are both of us just playing a part to keep the broken parts of us hidden from the world._

 _Deels, I can't help thinking about how this should have been our first Christmas together in our own home. No matter how I try to push the thoughts away I keep imagining it. Waking up in our own bed, close enough to reach for your hand and whisper a 'Merry Christmas' in your ear, then cuddling back up under the covers for an extra five minutes, because finally,_ finally _there would be no risk of anyone walking in and catching us if we lingered too long. Then we'd make breakfast together and sit under our own little Christmas tree to exchange gifts. Perhaps we would both be on duty that day (after all the work of nurses and midwives doesn't stop even for the baby Jesus) but even if we spent the day apart, at the end of it we would be able to come home and close the door and return to just being_ us _again. Do you want to know a secret? That day is what I wished for in my letter to Santa. Oh not the one I wrote with Trixie and Barbara of course, for that I wished for silly things, like enema pots that dispose of themselves and uniforms that repel bodily fluids, but somehow I couldn't get the game out of my mind and after they had both gone to bed I snuck back downstairs and wrote a different kind of letter. It might be foolish fancy but it will do no harm to 'send a little wish for myself heavenward' as Barbara's father would say._

 _I hope you like your presents. Just as you said to me, it somehow feels important that I get this right. The jug was my first idea – a nice, modern geometric design of course, not roses or violets, but it wasn't enough. I kept thinking about your first letter, when you told me your room was full of 'prim water colours of flowers', and how the last time we were together you told me that you wanted the only flowers in the room to be real ones. I thought that if you were here in Poplar I'd make sure there were always fresh flowers for this jug. But you're not here, and I realized that that is no reason to stop me from sending you flowers anyway. I had to find a map of the area in the library archives to find the names of the nearest towns, then spend an hour calling directory enquiries to track down a florist that would be near enough, able to deliver and willing to do what I asked for a sum I could afford. But eventually I managed it and it is all arranged – for as long as you are staying in your mother's house you will always have fresh, colourful flowers delivered fortnightly to your door to remind you that I love you (even if you don't know that that is what they're saying).The balloon you will find tucked inside the jug was a late addition, and I hope it will make you smile. I picked the one that promised to be the biggest and reddest in remembrance of Susan, as a celebration of your childhood memories returning to you._

 _The rest of the box was filled by others here in Poplar. Everyone put in a little something to let you know you aren't forgotten. The nuns donated a parcel of gingerbread men (after the last cake they sent as a gift arrived with a slice missing courtesy of Sister Monica Joan they decided biscuits would be safer, and more traditional than a cherry sponge for the time of year in any case). Fred kept with the ginger theme by supplying a couple of bottles from his new batch of ginger beer, but Trixie warned me of his last attempts at brewing, so I have included a note to drink with caution in case he got his figures wrong and made it highly alcoholic again! Mrs Buckle has very kindly sent a pretty length of blue fabric with white polka dots, in case you should wish to practice dress making to keep you entertained while you are away from work. Trixie sent the chocolates and Barbara the sherry and the bag of shells (because I told her you wished you could have a summer beach party in winter too). The card is from the cubs - they made if for you in their last session and have all signed it and added their own jokes and stories. I hope you like the photographs from their 'Christmas Carol' performance as well! Dear Timothy Turner made then up for me and asked that I wrap them with a ribbon (which he had bought with his own pocket money) and send it as his own contribution to your gift. I was really quite touched when everyone told me they wanted to send something on to you. I forget sometimes how much a part of a family I am now._

 _I love you Delia._

 _Merry Christmas Sweetheart._

 _Love,  
Patsy_


	15. Chapter 15

Dear Pats,

I'm sorry to hear you didn't have big family Christmases as a child. I rather like imagining a darling little red haired girl bouncing about in her pyjamas, all tangled in wrapping paper under a Christmas tree, or sitting up at a big table surrounded by a dozen red headed relatives with a mince pie in each hand! If you were to paint 'Susan' I think I would be tempted to respond with a 'baby Patsy on Christmas day' scene, even if it were a made up one! I hope you didn't spend _all_ your Christmases away at school. From what you've told me I can't quite picture your Mother Gertrude being the type to wear a paper crown and sing about figgy pudding over her Christmas dinner.

But even if you spent your girlhood Christmases in solemn prayerful places I'm glad you're making up for it now! Do tell me all about your Christmas morning with Barbara and Trixie. I love the way you all look after each other, just like sisters. Did Barbara come in in her pyjamas as soon as she woke up, clutching her stocking as you said she would? Barbara sounds like such a darling; I hope she enjoyed the day even if she couldn't be with her father in Liverpool. I was so touched that she sent me some of her shells so I could have my own winter seaside! Will you tell her that I've put them out on display, and that I think them beautiful? Oh, and did Trixie like all the little things you picked out for her at the market? You are such a sweet friend Pats, quietly fixing it so that everyone would have a merry Christmas.

I can't wait to be well enough to be a part of that life in Poplar again! I know I wasn't one of you Nonnatus midwives, but I feel so close to it all through your letters it's almost as though I have lived there myself. Perhaps when I come back I could find something similar with the other girls in the Nurses' home, or even convince a good friend or two to live out with me (I know you wouldn't be interested in that when you are so close to your friends at Nonnatus House so I shan't make you find a polite way to turn me down, but perhaps I could find a place not too far away so that we could visit each other). But I'm getting ahead of myself. After all who knows how long it will be until the doctor signs me off as fit to return to work? (Do you think they'll make me go all the way through training again, or could I just resit the exams to prove myself competent when enough of my memories are back?) I'm not sure of the protocol for nurses with amnesia and mam won't even discuss the subject. She wants me to take the job being advertised at the post office in the village and forget all about coming back to London (as if I haven't done enough forgetting to last a life time already!), but I'd be bored stiff selling stamps and sorting letters all day. I want to be a nurse. And as picturesque as it is, I want to get out of this little village that seems so far removed from real life. I have been careful not to argue over this with mam for the last week though. Since I read about all the kind things you've been doing to give the people you love a merry Christmas I've been determined to do the same for her. I know I keep writing about how mam drives me to distraction with cosseting, but really it's only that she loves me and I gave her such a fright, almost dying the way I did. She's put her whole life on hold to care for me, so I've been thinking on ways to recreate some of _her_ happiest Christmas memories.

The last Christmas I remember before this one was the year I was ten and my family was still determined I should believe in Santa Claus. We were all staying with my grandparents for the holidays – my aunts and uncles and cousins as well, so it was quite a squash, but a cheerful one. All of us children were sharing the little attic room, sleeping on grandma's big old fashioned mattresses full of honest to goodness straw ticking (they lived on a farm so straw was easy to come by, but even so I bet you never imagined people still sleeping on straw mattresses in this day and age, even just for extended family visits!). Apart from the baby I was the youngest, and I was small for my age even then so everyone was treating me as the family pet. I think I must have realized on some level that although I was at an age where I wanted to be seen as mature, what my family (and particularly my mam) wanted more than anything was to get to have the kind of magical Christmas that only exists through the eyes of a child and what they needed from me was to be that child. I know, I sound very wise for my young years, but I have come to believe that children understand much more than they are given credit for. I remember climbing onto my grandfather's lap (though I felt much too old for that) and asking for stories of his boyhood Christmases, simply because I knew it would bring that happy, faraway look to his eyes when he talked about it. I remember pretending not to know that the clip clop noises like hooves in the yard outside were made by my uncle and not reindeer as I called out excitedly to my cousins.

That Christmas Eve mam and my cousin Dilys and I made jam tarts especially to have something to leave out for Santa, and to this day I think that time is the happiest I remember seeing my mam, her face smudged with flour and her cheeks rosy with laughter as we all sang carols and dolloped jam into pastry cases. She didn't even scold me when I licked my spoon clean afterwards, just winked at me and licked her own spoon, then hid it behind her back when grandma came into the kitchen as if _she_ were the little girl being caught at mischief by her mother, for all she was grown up with a child of her own!

Since grandma has passed on now and my cousins are all scattered to the winds with families of their own I couldn't arrange a big family get together like that one this year, but on Christmas morning I set my alarm clock to go off very early so I could be up first to surprise her. I got the fire lit and did all the morning chores so that by the time she woke up it would be all spotlessly clean and cosy, and set out the ingredients for jam tarts on the kitchen counter, in deference to that long ago day. When everything was in place downstairs I took mam her breakfast up on a tray, the way she used to for me on special days. She protested a bit when I climbed into the bed next to her, but when I made to get up again she put a hand on my arm to stop me and tucked her blankets more snugly over my feet 'like little blocks of ice cariad! You ought to wear your slippers'. In the end we shared the boiled eggs and buttery toast soldiers and swapped our best childhood Christmas stories. Mam remembers most of mine herself of course, but I didn't know all of hers. It turns out she could be quite the little scamp herself as a girl!

There was one particularly memorable occasion when she had found the Christmas treats too tempting to bear and had eaten every other chocolate drop from round the edge of the cake, thinking no one would notice. Of course they _did_ notice and she spent the rest of the week leading up to Christmas genuinely terrified she would find nothing but a lump of coal in her stocking! She even wrote a letter to Santa apologising for what she'd done and promising to give half her Christmas chocolate to her mother to make new chocolate drops out of, if only he would forgive her and not put her on the naughty list. She had taken the letter right into the post office instead of just dropping it in the box and asked very seriously that the man make sure it reached Mr Claus _before_ Christmas Eve, or he might not get it in time to change his mind about her. The man must have been deeply touched when she explained why she was sending the letter, because in addition to her usual presents (among which there was not the slightest trace of coal of course), on Christmas morning she found a mysterious little parcel wrapped in green and red striped tissue paper, with a note saying 'For the cake, With love from Santa's Post Elf'. Inside was a packet of chocolate drops, even nicer than the ones she had stolen.  
Mam laughed a little when she told this story and said she'd never dared tell it to me when I was a child, because she just knew that if she had I'd have been bound to try it out for myself!

Mam's always an early riser, so even after our long lie in and leisurely breakfast it was only just after seven when she went off to have a wash and get dressed, and while she was occupied there was plenty of time for me to get back to my room for our promised meeting at 7.30.  
How is it you seem to know just how to make me happiest, even from so far away? We must have been very close friends before all this happened. I feel as though even now you know me better than I know myself. Perhaps better than I have _ever_ known myself, because surely even if I had all my memories I could never have picked out so perfect a gift for myself as you did. It's a little frightening, as though you can see right to my truest heart and read it as plainly as your morning paper with all its faults, and yet I don't even know the sound of your voice. Did I know you so well once too, or are you truly a guardian angel as you seem? How did you know I was longing for the bright cheer of fresh flowers, when I didn't know it myself? The first order came today and even as I'm sitting here writing this my eyes keep being drawn to the sunny reds and oranges of them on my windowsill. They are such a warm mix of colours I feel as though you truly have sent me a little piece of summer, especially as I have arranged Barbara's shells all around the jug. With them there I can almost imagine the sound of the wind and rain outside to be warm waves breaking on the golden sand of a faraway beach.

Tell me Patsy, did I once own something like this jug? I feel almost certain I've never seen it before, and yet it seems somehow that I know it. I'm not sure how to describe what I mean exactly, but it makes me feel more than such a simple object has any right to. When I unwrapped it, before I'd even read your note about the flowers or had time to do anything but hold the jug in my hands and see the pattern, I started trembling so hard the paper rustled in my lap. I felt so happy when I saw it, as though a little piece of a dream I held dear had been given to me, and yet at the same time it made me want to cry, as though I was waking up to find that whatever dream the jug symbolizes had faded forever beyond my reach. Surely a pretty trinket couldn't inspire such strong feelings all by itself? Please tell me Patsy, why _this_ present? I feel as though the memory is so close, but I can't quite grasp it. Does it mean something, or am I just being silly? In truth, I'm still a little afraid I might be crazy.

But enough of this talk! This is meant to be a Christmas letter after all, and should be full of good cheer. Please pass on my gratitude to all the people in Poplar that sent me such wonderful gifts, I am touched beyond words by their kindness and I love every one of my presents. Mam and I took the gingerbread men along to the church carol concert and shared them out with the children after they were done singing (I hope the nuns will approve of this and won't think it a rejection of their present. There were far too many for just the two of us to eat and it was lovely to see the children's excited little faces when we gave them the treat! There was just the right number for everyone to have one so I think perhaps that this is what they were meant for all along). I haven't quite been brave enough to try Fred's ginger beer yet, but Mrs Buckle's dress fabric is ever so pretty! Mam gave me a white dress with blue polka dots for my Christmas present, so I think perhaps I will use this fabric to try and make her a blue one with white dots! (not a matching pattern of course, that might be going a step too far; but it is the sort of sentiment that mam is very keen on and since our Christmas morning together I find myself wanting to please her even if it seems a little twee).

I want to send special thanks to Timothy and the cubs too. Besides yours (which is incomparable in its perfection) their presents made me feel most truly loved and remembered. Fancy Tim spending his own pocket money on a ribbon, and taking the time and care to develop copies of those photos for me! And the card with all its sweet, funny messages from the boys was so lovely, I can almost hear the clamour of them all. I've replaced some of the floral watercolours on my walls with the pictures of the cubs' Christmas Carol performance (Alfie does look funny as Tiny Tim! And Steven makes a wonderful Scrooge. Is Jack in any of them, the boy you told me of in your very first letter? It makes me so happy being able to set faces to the names I've been hearing about for so long!) and already my room feels friendlier and more like my own. I've blown up my Susan balloon (I laughed out loud when I found it tucked inside my beautiful vase) and have it tied to my curtain rail as a shiny red reminder that wishes really can come true, be it a small girl's wish for a balloon at the fair or a recovering amnesiac's wish for her memories to return!

Thank you so much Patsy, for your friendship and for your lovely gifts. I hope one day, when I'm well again and back in London I will be able to repay you for all your kindness. Or perhaps even sooner? As soon as the weather starts warming up, let's have that trip to the seaside and I shall spoil you rotten! I feel so impatient for it, but I know it's still too cold to go off immediately. Do you think you could bear a beach holiday in March, or ought we to wait until the warmer days of April or even May? Don't let me bully you into a miserable wet weekend with my impatience will you Pats? I think you are the sensible one of us, so if you say we ought to wait I will agree with good grace no matter how much I want to see you immediately!

Love,

Delia


	16. Chapter 16

Dear Delia,

I'm afraid you've got me imagining Mother Gertrude in a hideous Christmas jumper with tinsel on her wimple singing 'Good King Wenceslas' and it is NOT an image she'd have thanked me for! If she ever read this she'd have me kneeling in the chapel in lieu of supper, saying 'Our Fathers' and praying to the newborn baby Jesus to cure me of my wilful disrespect (and that would be if I was very lucky and she was truly in the Christmas spirit, for though she had a certain soft spot for me as her fencing star and captain of the hockey team she wasn't a bit shy with the cane she kept in her desk no matter who you were, or how minor the infraction. Sadly she was of the 'beat the body to save the soul' school of thought).  
...Well, no, I suppose she wouldn't. I still forget when I think of school that I am a grown woman now and cannot be made to do penance for my cheek! In which case I shall embellish the imagining further by adding a glass of sherry and a tipsy game of charades against the priest! Oh dear I really am being dreadful now. I suppose Mother Gertrude must be quite old now and I should think on her more kindly.

Christmas day was busy as I still had rounds to do and a delivery to attend, but we all had a lovely day even so and Barbara was delighted with it all. I had quite a time of it trying to sneak the stockings up secretly though. Barbara's was no trouble; she went off to bed early and went straight to sleep (just as a good girl should on Christmas Eve! Her father clearly trained her well) so I could just slip in under the pretence of going to the bathroom once I heard nurse Crane's snores and leave the stocking hanging from the bed post. I left a set of gift wrapped embroidered handkerchiefs for Nurse Crane as well (she doesn't seem to approve of whimsy or indulgence so a stocking or even a box of chocolates was out of the question, but it seemed a little mean to leave her out altogether so I thought a nicely presented, practical present might just do the trick).

Trixie's stocking presented much more of a challenge. It seemed she was quite as determined as I was to be the last one awake, sitting up with her magazine as it got later and later, though I saw her glance at the clock every few minutes and I was sure she was as tired as I was. Eventually, when I got up for my third mug of bournvita (more because moving around and having something to do with my hands when I got back would help me stay awake than because I really wanted it) she gave up the pretence and said 'for heaven's sake Patsy, how's a girl supposed to play Santa around here if you won't go to _sleep?_ ' After that I confessed my own secret mission and we had a giggle over ourselves, both waiting impatiently for the other to go to sleep so we could get on and play Santa's little helper. In the end Trixie brought out the decorations which were her own surprise and we worked together to turn our bedroom into a real Santa's grotto with holly and tinsel and even a miniature Christmas tree. She did bring up the idea of leaving a trail of sparkly tinsel stars leading from Barbara's room to ours, but the nun's get up at 4.30 and Sister Evangelina would not be at all pleased if she tripped over them on her way to the chapel, so we contented ourselves with draping tinsel over Barbara's headboard and leaving a note 'from Santa' saying to come through to our room at 8am instead.

When Trixie saw her and Barbara's stockings she insisted I needed one as well, and although I protested that it wasn't necessary she found one of her own real stockings that had a ladder all down the back and hung it on my bed post. I tried pointing out that it was unlikely that a troupe of elves would arrive to fill it before morning but she just gave me one of her best enigmatic smiles and said 'Oh Patsy, surely you can't be doubting Santa Claus! You be careful or you'll find a lump of coal in there in the morning. Now go to sleep like a good girl. Don't you know better than to ask how Christmas miracles happen?' I couldn't think how Trixie was planning to fill it and the pale snakey stocking looked ever so strange dangling there, as if I'd just thrown it off when I got changed that night and it caught there, but I stopped arguing and did as I was told. By that point I was so tired I was asleep before I could think any more about stockings or anything else, and the next thing I knew my alarm clock was going off and it was Christmas morning.

I switched it off quickly so it wouldn't wake Trixie, but she'd been up later than I had and was still fast asleep with her head under the pillow, so for a while I had the morning all to myself. Even though I had helped construct it I was a little awed by how magical the room looked. It really did look like a scene from some wonderfully traditional picture postcard family Christmas and it made me feel so fond of Trixie, knowing she had been going to do all this by herself.

I put my bedside lamp down on the floor on the side of my bed furthest from Trixie's to try and keep the light from waking her while you and I exchanged gifts, so in the end your image of me sitting under a Christmas tree opening presents came true! In the real version I was rather bigger than you imagined and the tree was rather smaller, but I'm sure I could never have been more delighted with whatever toy your little Patsy was unwrapping than I am with your scarf. Oh Deels it's beautiful, thank you so much! And so soft and thick it feels almost like being given a hug when I put it on. I'm simply thrilled to bits that you made it for me; it is far and away my favourite present. I'm sure I won't notice the cold in it even if I'm cycling out into a blizzard!

Barbara was as excited as a little puppy when she came in at 8, her arms full of her stocking and parcels for me and Trixie and the tinsel we put over her headboard decorating her hair like a halo. It wasn't until she was bouncing on the end of Trixie's bed saying 'Merry Christmas Trixie! Oh look, you have a stocking too! Oh do wake up! Did you two do all this? It's magical!' that I remembered my own stocking, and sure enough, when I went round the bed post to look it was heavy and lumpy at the end, as if Santa really had been in the night. When we got round to opening them I discovered from the top down: a tin of liquorice 'mighty imps', a bar of Fry's Five Boys, three walnuts, a shiny new penny and an orange. Trixie was watching me with a comical expression: 'Santa decided to give you the most traditional stocking of them all Patsy!'  
Then I pulled out the pack of cigarettes stuffed in the toe and she burst out laughing 'well, mostly traditional. I'm told a proper stocking ought to include some manner of prayer book, but I pulled a few strings and had Santa leave you those instead'.  
I know they are all things she either had herself or managed to find in the kitchen (in the case of the fruit and nuts) but it rather felt as though Trixie really had managed to conjure up Father Christmas!

As soon as the gifts were exchanged we all had to get a move on and get ready for our morning rounds, but even that had an air of jollity about it as in honour of the day we were starting later than usual and only paying essential visits instead of the full roster (after all, how many people want their Christmas day interrupted with home inspections and delivery pack drop offs that could as easily be done the next day?). There are always Christmas babies to be delivered as well of course, and between us we brought into the world a Nicholas, two Carols and a Noel throughout the day. Trixie says if she ever finds herself giving birth on Christmas day she's going to call the child Summer just to get away from the Christmas name clichés!

Your Christmas morning sounds lovely and I'm so glad you liked your gifts! Barbara is delighted that you are putting the shells to good use, and I will be sure to pass on your thanks to everyone when I see them. I'm sure Mrs Buckle will be charmed with the use you're putting her gift to, and don't worry, the nuns would never look badly on bringing joy to others with what you have been given (and really, who could begrudge children a piece of gingerbread at Christmas?). As for Timothy and the cubs, I strongly suspect that they will all be rather full of themselves to learn that you think their pictures good enough to display on your wall! Jack was playing the ghost of Marley, so I'm afraid you may find it a little difficult to make out his face clearly under all that grey paint (but he did an excellent job wrapping his own chains and the bandages round his head don't you think? He is still very keen on first aid and was most disappointed that he wasn't there to see the ambulance when Alfie broke his leg!).

I am especially glad that you liked my gifts. As much as I would love to take the credit as a wise, wish granting guardian angel there is no great mystery in how I knew what to get you. The simple fact of the matter is you as good as told me exactly what you'd like the last time I saw you, so there is no need to feel discomfited! As to why the jug made you feel so strongly… well I think that is perhaps a sign that your more recent memories are surfacing. I'm honestly not sure what to tell you for the best (does telling you about memories you don't have yet interfere with your own recall? I don't want to confuse things for you), but I can't leave you feeling so conflicted if I might be able to help. Of course I don't know exactly what you would have been feeling about it all, but just before your accident you had been planning to move out of the Nurses' Home and into your own flat. It was something you were very excited about and when you told me your dream of what your new home was to look like you described flowers on the windowsill (where they would always catch the light) and china with a nice, modern pattern. That's what made me think to send those gifts in the first place. Perhaps the jug brought something of that memory back and the sadness was disappointment about your change in circumstances? After all it must be quite an adjustment to go from being at the beginning of a grand adventure of independence in London to returning to your childhood home and getting used to the role of invalid.

But that dream isn't lost forever Delia, it's still here for you if and when you are ready for it. I'm sure the hospital would be delighted to have you back, and if your memories all return I doubt you would even have to formally resit your exams. Even if they don't, I'm sure it wouldn't stop you from nursing if that's what you want, it just might take a little longer to get back to where you were. You should discuss it with your Doctor, I'm sure he'd be able to help you even if your mother doesn't like to talk about it. Perhaps he might be willing to go so far as to arrange some part time work at a small cottage hospital or even his own surgery so that you could start rehabilitating to nursing practice? It might help you to feel less frustrated while you're convalescing and help your mother come round to the idea of you returning to nursing?

As to our holiday, I don't think March too early at all. After a winter of smog here in London a little brisk sea air will be just what the doctor ordered to clear away the cobwebs, and I dare say we shall manage well enough if it's a little chilly. We can go in search of local art galleries and tea shops if the weather is too bad to stroll along the seafront, and we can always eat our fish and chips inside! When I was in my first year as a student nurse I took a trip down to Brighton with a few of the other girls for a little seaside sunshine. It was the middle of July so we'd all packed our bathing suits and sun dresses, but it rained solidly the entire time and got so cold that we half expected to wake up to find frost on the windows (although that was probably due to the lack of heating in our hotel and the fact that we didn't have a decent coat or proper jumper between us more than a real indication of temperature). We ended up spending most of the time wrapped up in the bed sheets for warmth, playing games of scrabble and cluedo (both of which we discovered under one of the beds, presumably abandoned by some former holiday maker) and sneaking fish and chips past the reception desk to eat in our bedrooms, but it was still ever so jolly and we came back as full of beans as if we really had had a weekend of sunbathing and ice creams. I think holidays are what you make of them, so as long as we make sure to take a pack of cards I'm sure we will manage a fine seaside holiday whatever the weather!

Love,  
Patsy

... ... ...

 _Dearest Deels,_

 _Should I have told you in my last letter that we had been going to move into a flat together? You said yourself, lots of girls share flats, it needn't have meant anything and omitting that fact felt almost like a direct lie after you asked about the jug. But I've spent all these weeks telling you how very jolly life here at Nonnatus House is and I'm not sure how I could explain it to you now without you guessing at the truth. I'm still too afraid you will be horrified by it to dare to do that. Would you believe the story I told Sister Julienne, that I wanted to move out simply to get some life experience? That you and I were moving in together as a matter of convenience? You did hint that you might like us to share a flat when (when! Not if!) you return to London, but you also didn't believe I would ever want to (oh Deels, you darling. The irony of that part of your letter would have been almost funny if it wasn't so upsetting).  
_

 _I was so close to telling you that we had been going to be room mates before you left, to say we could be again when you came back if you wanted to (after all being close to you even as just a friend would be better than not being near you at all)… but then you said it was frightening how well I knew you and I'm not sure if that was a light hearted joke or whether it might have been revealing a genuine discomfort. Perhaps I should back off a little bit. It's so easy to fall into the habit of talking to you as I always have, especially as you remember more and more and sound so much like yourself. I hated telling you that you felt so strongly over your present because you were simply disappointed about not getting your flat. How am I going to explain things if your memory comes back in little bits and pieces? I hate lying to you Delia, you of all people._

 _But it's better this way, and I hope you would see that too, if you were here to comment on it all. I must keep on reminding myself that there are no guarantees. Even when your memories return (because after your last letters and your reaction to the jug I have to believe that they WILL return) it still might turn out that you don't want such an intimate relationship as we had, and I am determined to be alright with that, no matter how much it hurts._

 _It feels almost like we are back at the beginning all over again, when I was falling more and more in love with you but was trying to convince both of us that my feelings were purely platonic because I didn't know yet whether you could ever feel that way for another woman, let alone for me. Now here we are again and I feel as though I should be able to be surer this time, but I'm not. Only it's worse now because I truly know what I stand to lose if it doesn't go the way I hope. You said that I seem like the sensible one of the two of us and I suppose it's true, I have always been the more cautious. I think I see the world as more dangerous than you do and facades have been my way of life since early childhood. But for all that, had you suggested going for a seaside holiday in the Arctic (or for that matter, skinny dipping in the queen's own private boating lake) I couldn't have turned you down if it meant I got to see you sooner._

 _All my love,_

 _Patsy_


	17. Chapter 17

AN: sorry this is coming so much later in the day than usual, and may have more typos/iffy bits. It has been a long, bad day.

Reviews will help make it better though, if anyone's inclined to leave them :)

* * *

Dear Patsy,

I like the sound of your Nonnaus nuns much better than the ones you went to school with. I feel quite indignant and protective of little school-girl Patsy, as if I could go back and tell Mother Gertude off for spoiling her Christmas (and if she dared touch you with her cane then heaven help her! Nun or not, no one gets to hit my Pats!) . I don't think schools ought to hit children at all – all this 'spare the rod spoil the child' nonsense is so outdated. Why can't souls be saved with kindness, if they need saving at all? (I'm sure yours didn't at any rate, you are such a darling). I remember getting a few raps with a ruler in my school days myself, even though I was never a really _bad_ child, just a bit careless and dreamy sometimes. Being hit only made me more inattentive because the pain was distracting and I'd be feeling so indignant at the punishment when my only crime was getting an answer wrong because I'd been lost in thought for a moment... Oh dear, I've just realized that I might have told you about Mr Howell when I was in London and if so you'll know I wasn't _always_ 'just a bit careless and dreamy'.

So yes, alright - I _did_ fill his pockets with tapioca when he left his jacket unattended and I suppose that really is rather naughty. But he was dreadful Pats, he truly was. He spat when he talked (serious 'first two rows need at umbrella' spitting) and called me 'girly' instead of Delia and seemed to make a sport of seeing how many children he could reduce to tears in a single lesson. Even so I would never have done it, except one day I had put my hand up to give an answer or ask a question one too many times for his liking and he told me to be quiet because girls didn't need to understand maths to be a wife, they just had to look nice and do as they were told. I told him I wasn't going to be anyone's silly old wife, I was going to be a _nurse_. I was so proud of my ambition! And young enough to think telling him that would make a difference to the way he thought of me. But then he laughed at me – a hard, sneary 'up close in the face' laugh as if I had said something both ridiculous and slightly crude and deserved to be made an example of. Then he said I couldn't be a nurse because by the time I grew up the war would be over and women would be back in the kitchen where they belonged, so I should stop bothering him with questions in class and look more to my appearance and home making skills instead. Not a single girl dared raise their hand once for the rest of his lesson. It was quite horrible.

I know I probably should have just resolved to prove him wrong and left it at that (after all he was an ex-boys' school teacher who had only come out of retirement because of the war and nothing I could do would change the fact that his ideas about women belonged to another century) but I was only seven and he made me so angry! And then they served tapioca at lunch time and I HATED tapioca, and I hated him, and the dinner nanny was at home with influenza so no one was watching to make sure I finished my serving. It was as though everything was coming together to help me carry out my revenge and what happened next really seemed inevitable at the time. Oh Pats, his face was such a picture when he put his hands in his pockets and found them coated in cold slime! I'm sure you know I'm a terrible liar so I couldn't deny it when he accused me, but It was almost worth the stinging he gave the back of my legs for it, and the chastisement certainly doesn't seem to have reformed my character in the least because I still think he deserved it. Your school nuns sound even worse though. However did you dare move into a convent after your school experiences?

But you must be glad you did, the Nonnatus nuns sound so lovely and if you hadn't you would never have met Trixie and Barbara and all the rest! You and Trixie seem like such good friends to each other. I love the idea of getting to share a room with your best friend that way – fancy the two of you sitting up half the night, both trying to out-Santa the other! As nice as it is to give other people surprises though it was probably even nicer to set the decorations up together, and I love the idea of Trixie making you a stocking out of one of her own old ones. I think she's quite right; it would be a terrible shame if you were the only one without one. If there had been time enough between getting your letter on Friday and Christmas morning on Sunday I'd have made one for you myself and sent it in the post!

I don't care what you say to the contrary, to me you are a wish granting guardian angel and you shan't be able to deny it when you hear my news! Do you remember you suggested I talk to the doctor about the idea of me returning to nursing and the possibility of a position in the little local hospital? Well, I went in to see him first thing this morning, and he said he thought it was a wonderful idea! It's been weeks now since my last proper seizure, all my physical wounds have healed and he says that working in this sort of environment might well help trigger recall of my nursing days. I'm so excited! At first I'll only be there three mornings a week, and I expect he'll just have me counting stock and emptying bedpans, but it's a start and if I can prove myself then I'll be able to start actually working with patients again. And the very best bit is that if I demonstrate competence at the cottage hospital he said he's willing to write a formal reference to the London recommending me as ready to return to a city hospital, should I want to go. I'm one step closer Pats!

After it was all arranged he introduced me to Sister Davies, who is in charge of the nurses there (though for the day shift there's only her and one of two others there at a time as it is a very small place). I think I shall enjoy working at the cottage hospital. I didn't get to do more than say hello to the other nurse as she was busy on the ward, but Sister Davies seems like a decent sort. I think she runs a very tight ship so I shall have to watch my step while I'm still learning the ropes, but she also seems to be fair and not ungenerous with praise when it's earned. She took me to her office and asked me questions about nursing procedure and had me demonstrate a few things. She did say some of my methods were 'new fangled London ideas', but she also told me the other girls could learn a thing or two from my hospital corners, and she seemed pleased with me overall. It made me so happy because often I don't realize that I remember how to do something until I try it, and this is something it seems I really can do! Once she was satisfied with my general competence she took me round the ward and the stock rooms and told me a bit about the way they work there. She even sized me up for a uniform right then and there. I have a uniform Pats! It's hanging neatly on the front of my wardrobe, and I keep finding myself reaching out to touch a sleeve or adjust the collar. I can't tell you how hard it is to resist the temptation to put it on and just look at myself in it in the mirror and grin like a fool because my childhood dream has come true all over again. But I want to keep it perfectly fresh, ready for my first shift tomorrow (tomorrow! I'm going to be a nurse again tomorrow! 'Nurse Busby reporting for duty'. I like the sound of that, don't you? However will I be able to sleep tonight?).

I was a little afraid that mam would put her foot down, especially as I didn't ask her before I went to talk to the doctor (it wasn't out of meanness, I was just so excited I didn't want her to make me nervous with a lecture!). But after I came skipping into the house with the parcel containing my brand new uniform and flung my arms round her like an excited child even she seemed to come round to the idea. I don't think she realized until now quite how much nursing means to me and she really does want me to be happy. She said that as long as I don't try to take on full shifts and stick to just shadowing the other nurses (of course I have no intention of doing that for any longer than absolutely necessary, but I haven't said that to her yet) it might be good for my memories for me to be back in a nursing environment. She spoilt it a bit by adding that maybe this would stop my ridiculous notion of coming back to London because I could do the same job right here at home, but at least it's a step in the right direction. I think my Susan balloon must be a lucky mascot, making all my wishes come true! Or maybe it's _you_ bringing me good fortune; after all it was your idea for me to ask in the first place. So thank you Patsy!

Actually, I've been wanting to apologise for my last letter. I'm a little embarrassed about writing to you regarding my little funny turn when I opened your present. I hope it didn't make you think I didn't like it; I absolutely _adore_ my lovely jug. I expect I was just a little bit overwrought. Maybe it was to do with remembering my grandmother in such detail with mam right before that. Newly regaining memories does have the unfortunate effect of making it feel as though things have just happened, so maybe it was just a little grief remembering she is gone now. We were very close once upon a time. She trained as a nurse in the local hospital during the Great War, for all she had little kiddies at the time, and she was so proud that I wanted to follow her into the profession. She made me a little replica nurse's uniform for my sixth birthday and it was my most prized possession. I can remember arguing with mam over it when I wanted to wear it to Cousin Vince's wedding. Grandma said it was smart enough and quite proper for me to show support to the war effort for the occasion, what with Vince being a military man home on leave himself, and eventually mam gave in! My grandma was almost like an ally in mischief at times and I do miss her, for all her strictness when it came to things like being respectful to my elders (even ones like Mr Howell) and her mistrust of anyone without a Welsh accent. Anyway, I hope you won't think badly of me for my little silliness. I'm sure being gainfully employed again will help keep such things at bay - having too much time to just sit and think does rather strange things to ones mind!

Love,  
Delia

—–

 _Dear Patsy,_

 _The more we exchange these letters back and forth, the more I feel as though I'm missing something – as if there is some part of the big picture that you aren't telling me. I've tried dropping hints but either you don't pick up on them or you are deliberately keeping something back, and I can hardly ask you outright when I don't even know what it is I'm asking for. Besides, it would sound as though I was accusing you of something and you have been such a wonderful friend to me I don't want you to think that. How could you possibly begin to tell me everything after all? Your letters have made me happier than I can say; I don't know what I'd do without them, or without you. So I'm hoping that just putting pen to paper and writing all of this confusion down will help me to sort through it and maybe work out what the problem is. I'm not really writing to you at all (I'll never send it), and yet starting with 'Dear Patsy' seems so natural I did it without thinking. I never could keep a diary, but somehow if I imagine the words going to you, it's easy. Whatever would you think of me if you saw this? (no, I'm sure you wouldn't mind, you never seem to think badly of my strange notions. I think you'd be glad to know it helped me. Perhaps you'd even think it 'charming'. I hope so)._

 _There's been… something, for a while now. Maybe even since that first time I woke up with the smell of bleach in my nose and no idea why (maybe earlier still, from the very beginning when absolutely everything was so strange that I couldn't have begun to pick out one strangeness from another), but I think it really started properly with Christmas day and the jug. I know you said it was to do with my having a flat of my own, but somehow that explanation just doesn't quite sit right. Could I really have gotten so_ very _upset over that? After all, moving back here is a trial that has been ongoing since this whole sorry affair began, and whether I was living in a flat or a Nurses' Home in London seems to make very little difference. The sadness felt bigger than that, more important. It was like the dense fog of my amnesia had thinned for a moment; just enough for me to see myself and discover I was missing a leg and would never walk again, like something that fundamental to who I am was gone. For a few seconds the sadness was so overwhelming that I couldn't breathe, I just sat there with your beautiful gift in my lap and my hands pressed over my mouth as though I was about to scream or throw up or just cry and cry until I was empty of tears… but perhaps it isn't fair of me to ask you why that should be. Maybe I never told you why I wanted that particular thing so you had no idea of the effect it would have. You have come to be so important to me over these last few weeks that I find it hard to remember that you were simply an ordinary friend who I tamed cubs with and saw at parties from time to time. Why should I expect_ you _to be able to interpret my own heart for me when I can't do it myself?_

 _But still there's a stubborn part of me that says you could if you wanted to, and that the reason you won't is part of this whole big 'something'. I told you in my last letter that it was to do with grandma passing away but I know that isn't the case, I just can't bear to have you think me crazy. This sadness was something recent, something… I don't know, something else. I so hope I start getting my London memories back soon so I can figure out this mystery._

 _Love,  
Delia_


	18. Chapter 18

AN: Thank you to all the lovely people who left reviews yesterday (and especially to people who leave them regularly!), getting to see them really did help make me feel better :)

* * *

Dear Delia,

The first thing I need to do is apologise for the slapdash appearance of this letter. I'm afraid I'm writing it in rather unusual circumstances and the lack of a decent desk and proper lighting is making it difficult keep my handwriting tidy. But it is all in a good cause, if a bit of a strange one!

Today was one of those days when a dozen little things seem to go wrong before breakfast and everyone was at odds. We have one or two mothers-to-be on our books that are becoming a cause for concern and there are some disagreements on how best to handle the situation. Everyone feels _very_ strongly that their way is the right option (in fact the _only_ option) and it has been causing quite a few squabbles among the different factions. Add to that the fact that we all slept badly after last night's storm, the milk was off so no one could have their usual morning cup of tea or coffee _and_ an entire pan of bacon was burnt to a cinder because Sister Winifred (who was meant to be minding it) had a nosebleed and everyone assumed someone else had taken over the cooking, and you have the makings of quite a tense morning.

No doubt it would have rumbled on without major incident had Nurse Crane not decided that this was the perfect time to bring up her new 'grand organizational plans' for the patients on our roster. Unfortunately Nurse Crane rarely displays much tact in such matters and can come across as rather disagreeable when she believes she knows best, which of course creates a great deal of friction with our other dominant personality, Sister Evangelina. The two of them are a little like cat and dog with each other at the best of times, but today Sister Evangelina was already particularly irritable because her ankle is giving her trouble where she turned it on a loose cobble (though I suspect she'd amputate her own leg without the benefit of anaesthesia before admitting to being in any pain), so the 'discussion' at the breakfast table was maintained only just below the level of shouting and exchanging blows in spite of all of Sister Julienne's words of reproach. All of us were feeling the urge to squirm in our seats and take cover by this point, but poor Sister Monica Joan (who had unwittingly taken a seat between the two of them when breakfast began) became more and more fidgety and upset until eventually she pushed back her chair and stood up so suddenly everyone stopped speaking at once in surprise. She announced that there was need of a place of peace and tranquillity in which one could shelter, because Mars was in ascendency all the hotheadedness that followed was distressing the dahlias. Then she picked up the potted plant from the middle of the table and swept out the room without another word.

In itself that would have been par for the course – Sister Monica Joan makes such declarations on an almost daily basis and generally very little comes of it, so by the time we were all preparing for morning rounds we had quite forgotten the whole affair and that would have been an end to it, except that she didn't turn up at the table for lunch. We assumed she had been foraging in the kitchen through the morning and left her in peace, but when it got to supper time and there was _still_ no sign of her we were all starting to get rather concerned. It wouldn't be the first time that Sister Monica Joan has gotten confused and wandered off barefooted into Poplar to be brought back by a policeman hours later. Sister Julienne asked me to go up and check her room and try to entice her to come and have something to eat, and that is how I find myself in my present situation (you didn't think I'd forgotten that's what I was supposed to be explaining did you?). I knocked on her door half expecting to find the room empty, but when I put my head in to check I discovered that Sister Monica Joan had spent the day building a sort of tent out of several bed sheets, string and some straight backed chairs that she must have had quite a time of getting up here! It looked like the sort of den every little boy longs to build but is forbidden to by his order-loving mother and I half wondered if there really _was_ a child here somewhere.

But of course, reality is stranger than fiction and when I got down on the floor and peered in at the entrance I discovered Sister Monica Joan sitting ensconced in pillows and surrounded by every pot plant at Nonnatus House (thank heaven Fred has already taken away the Christmas tree or goodness knows what she'd have done!). She wasn't in the least bit phased by my appearance and seemed altogether disinclined to explain what she was up to. She didn't even glance up at me, just continued lovingly polishing the leaves of a shrubby little plant and commented (seemingly more to herself than to me) 'there is such a tendency to overlook the humble Crassula Ovata, for it lacks both the bright blooms and sweet fruit that others use to draw the eye. But all need care and attention, or how are they to thrive?'. I wasn't sure what the correct response to that was so I tried to entice her out with the prospect of supper instead, but that seemed to upset her more: 'I fear I may waste away with the long hours since partaking in nourishment, but how can I abandon my vigil when there has been such disruption to the lives of those who cannot speak for themselves? If I leave the plants alone they may wither and die with the hostility that has been flung out there, like so much faeces by monkeys in a zoo!'  
I started to understand the purpose of her day's work and gentled my tone a little in reassurance. 'Sister, it's quite alright now. Sister Evangelina and Nurse Crane aren't arguing anymore, the plants will be perfectly safe while you're gone... And I believe there is a rather marvellous jam roly-poly for dessert. Won't you come and have some?'  
But remarkably even that prospect didn't win her over until I agreed to stay and look after her pot plants while she went for supper. So here I am, writing to you from a blanket den while I faithfully babysit the dahlias. Actually, I am beginning to rather enjoy myself. There is something very peaceful and comfortable about sitting curled up on cushions within walls made of bed sheets, and with so many plants in here it feels almost like I am somewhere between the warm safety of being in bed and trekking through tropical jungle. It is rather like being inside the dreamscape of a child, and I must confess I would be utterly content to stay here if only I had thought to bring a bit of supper up with me!

But here I am writing on and on about bed sheets and pot plants as if any of that matters when I haven't even acknowledged your amazingly exciting news yet! Oh Delia, you're a nurse again! Congratulations Nurse Busby, I am absolutely thrilled for you. I can't wait to hear all about your first week. Have you had a chance to meet both of the other day girls yet? What are they like? Is Sister Davies treating you well? Are they letting you help on the ward or still keeping you in the back to brush up your stocking skills? (It's an absolute waste if they are, but no doubt they will realize soon how much your sunny bedside manner has to offer in bringing cheer to the ward and will start to utilize your talents more fully!). Your doctor sounds like a very decent sort too, arranging it all for you so promptly! How wonderful that he has even offered to write to The London on your behalf when you're ready to return! Are you enjoying nursing? I hope it's living up to your expectations and that you aren't finding it too stressful.

You are certainly proving your Mr Howell wrong – you have defied his ridiculous limitations on the options available for women not once but twice! I'm sure little seven year old Delia would be very greatly comforted if she could see you now and know that you had achieved what you set out to do, but I can't say I blame her in the slightest for filling his pockets with tapioca. How dare he tell you you are fit for nothing but an obedient wife? I have always said girls are better than boys and as far as I'm concerned this incident only goes to prove me right. Thank goodness you are stubborn and wilful enough to follow your own dream instead of believe the dreadful rubbish touted by old dinosaurs like him. I really am quite appalled that he could try to crush the hopes of a little girl like that! I quite want to go and fill his pockets with tapioca myself. Or better yet his hat, which would have a much more dramatic effect! I agree with you entirely on the matter of corporal punishment. A good teacher has no need of it, and why should bad ones get to prop up their own deficits using fear tactics instead of taking the responsibility to engage the class on themselves? Maybe one day men like Mr Howell will be kept out of the profession and teachers will all be chosen because they are able to inspire young minds to love learning and make the best of themselves instead. At least I like to imagine it will be so for the little ones I deliver!

Oh Delia, you needn't apologise. Whatever the reason you have every right to feel sad, and I will never think any less of you for it so please don't feel as though you can't tell me. I only wish I could be there to comfort you when you're upset as you have done for me so often. Your grandmother sounds utterly delightful (although with my oh-so-very English enunciation I don't suppose she'd have said the same of me!), it's no wonder you miss her, especially if you had just spent the morning talking about all your family memories. She sounds like quite a role model for a young aspiring nurse, and she must have had some wonderful stories to tell! I'm sure she would have been incredibly proud of you if she could see you now.

Love,  
Patsy  
... ... ...

 _Dear Delia,_

 _Something happened when I was writing your letter and I so wish I could tell you about it because if I'm honest (and it is still hard for me to admit this) I am utterly petrified by it, but I suspect you would be delighted and would somehow get me to see things the way you do. I know it isn't the disaster I was fearing but still it makes me feel… well vulnerable I suppose, and that is the one thing I have been fighting hardest against for years. I know what it is to be utterly powerless, to have your life and the lives of those you love so completely in someone else's hands and_ _know that a simple whim on their part could destroy everything you've worked for_ _. Of course I know this isn't the same thing. I'm not in that place anymore and no one here means me any harm. But even so when it happened I couldn't help feeling the tight panic in my chest that comes with being trapped. I could almost hear my sister crying and our mother telling us to keep quiet, keep our heads down because it was safer to blend in. 'Being different is dangerous. Be one of the crowd, never let them see girls. Keep our business to yourselves. Keep safe'. There is a part of me that never forgot the rules I learnt to survive as a child and I suppose I still live by them, for all I like to think I have put the past firmly where it belongs. Which is why I am still awake and writing to you all these hours later, when the rest of Nonnatus House has long since gone to bed._

 _You see, while I was finishing your letter up in Sister Monica Joan's blanket den Trixie came looking for me. She must have realized that Sister Monica Joan had somehow convinced me I needed to stay put while she went to have supper, so she'd brought me up a piece of pie. I thought she'd just drop it off and go back down to the table, but instead she crawled right in and found a place for herself next to me among the plants. 'Goodness, Sister Monica Joan does come up with some queer notions doesn't she? What on Earth is this supposed to be, a greenhouse?'  
'I believe it's supposed to keep the plants safe from hostile monkey faeces… or something along those lines. To be honest I didn't quite catch the reasoning, but Sister Monica Joan was quite certain someone needed to stay in here to protect the plants from Sister Evangelina and Nurse Crane's arguing'.  
'Oh well, if it's going to keep us out of the firing line I'm all for it. It's actually rather novel isn't it?'  
We continued to talk of small things while I ate my pie, but when the last crumbs of pastry were finished and the plate was put outside the blanket's entrance Trixie nodded towards my half finished letter 'how is Delia anyway?'  
'She's doing well. Her early memories are coming back and she's just started nursing part time in the local cottage hospital, so we're hopeful that that will trigger some more recent memories'.  
'But she doesn't remember London yet? Or you? Oh Patsy, it must be dreadfully hard for you. I don't know what I'd do if Tom forgot I existed, and Tom and I aren't even seeing each other anymore'._

 _It was around then that my breath started to catch in my throat, but there was no look of calculation in her expression. She wasn't trying to trip me up, she meant it. Even so I couldn't admit to the truth and tried to keep my tone light and go on as if what she'd said was perfectly normal.  
'Yes, well you and Tom were engaged, it would be quite a different situation to Delia and I'.  
Trixie gave me a long look and shook her head a little 'only because you and Delia couldn't admit it. Oh Patsy, do you really think I don't know, after everything? I've been almost certain since that whole affair with Mr Amos anyway, but since Delia was hurt… well you don't act like a girl whose pal had an accident. I'm not blind Patsy, and I'm not deaf either, I hear you crying at night when you think I'm asleep and I see your face light up when her letters arrive each week, though you go quiet and barely make eye contact after reading them. And I wish you'd tell me. I couldn't care less whether you like boys or girls or Sister Monica Joan's begonias, but I do care about you. You're my friend and I hate to see you suffering on your own like this. I wouldn't have said anything if the two of you were still happily off in your flat together, but I know what it is to struggle alone with some big dark secret and having someone on your side can make all the difference. It did for me. So even if you don't want to talk about it… I'm on your side Patsy'.  
I could barely whisper by that point, but somehow I managed to get a response out around the lump in my throat 'alright, you're right. Delia isn't just my friend, she's my… well, my everything I suppose. But _please _don't tell anyone Trixie. Not even Barbara. Not even Delia herself because I don't know if she'll ever remember who we were to each other, and if she does she might be appalled. This place had become more home to me than any I remember and I can't bear the thought of losing my family too. No one can know. Not ever. Please Trixie'.  
'Of course not. I understand what it is to have secrets, and yours is safe with me, I promise'._

 _So that's it. We stayed and talked a bit more after that -Trixie told me a little of her own difficulties with drink, and the evenings she spent at alcoholics anonymous combating her problem. I gave her a hug and reassured her that I thought what she was doing was marvellous and brave, but I think she understood that I wasn't really capable of a big heart to heart just then. In the end we just sat quietly and took up where Sister Monica Joan had left off, polishing dust from the leaves of her various plants. And it was alright._

 _But now I'm anxious again, imagining all the ways something could go wrong. Trixie and I could argue and she could blurt it out in a fit of anger. She could slip up and say something incriminating when we're out dancing. I know deep down that she is too sensible, too use to keeping secrets to let that happen. But I have never done this before. The last time something like this happened, I ran._

 _Did I ever tell you that was why I left psych? The other nurses had begun to think me odd when I didn't join in their discussions about boys and never had dates. Then my lack of blushes and matter of fact manner when one of the more attractive male patients took to exposing himself (the poor chap really was almost entirely disconnected from reality and had become convinced his clothes were full of ants) started the whispers. Personally I thought such an attitude far more professional than their silly tittering (even if they only did it behind closed doors), but it may have been a mistake to tell them outright that I didn't see the appeal. I know they were only teasing when they said maybe I needed a bed on the ward myself to sort out my curious lack of romantic feeling, but even so it hit too close to the mark. The girls in psych were aware of queers in a way most people simply aren't, and it was dangerous._

 _Male surgical was safer. The nurses there were too familiar with the ways of men to be the least bit phased by them, and given the lechery we dealt with on a daily basis there was very little romanticizing that went on. A penis was simply anatomy there and my indifference was a necessary skill instead of an oddity. The thing is though Deels, I ran because of a hint, just a_ whisper _that Nurse Mount was a little odd, and maybe she was_ that _way (I don't even think they meant it seriously, it was the kind of joke the more callous among them made all the time: 'woops, careful Bea, you'll be hearing voices next')… but this time, it isn't a whisper. Trixie knows. She knows my biggest secret and if this had happened before your accident I would say I had never been more afraid of anything since I left the camp, but that isn't true anymore. I'm scared, but not the way I expected to be. Trixie is family, and if I am to be safe anywhere I feel it will be here. I think if I could talk to you about this you'd tell me to trust her and to be glad to know that I have at least one friend who cares so truly. So I'm trying to be alright._

 _All my love,  
Patsy_


	19. Chapter 19

Dear Patsy,

I think that may be the best simile for arguing I have ever heard. Did Sister Monica Joan truly say they were like monkeys throwing poo at each other in a zoo? I can't imagine from what you've told me that either Sister Evangelina or Nurse Crane would be terribly pleased by that comparison! But it has certainly tickled me. And that blanket den sounds wonderful! I am quite tempted to make one for myself now. If only I were there with you in London I'm sure we could come up with some excuse for doing such a thing with the cubs!

Maybe I shall do it anyway. It sounds like the perfect place to write letters, or just to curl up in with a mug of cocoa after a long shift. I think Sister Monica Joan has the right idea of it - with all that bickering and bad temper it's no wonder she felt like hiding. Although I must confess I would never have thought of taking the dahlias with me, however poetic it might be to have Delia and dahlia sitting in a tent together! It would have to be when mam's not home of course - I don't think she'd approve of me putting her good clean sheets to such a use any more than the order loving mothers of those little boys you mentioned! She'd think me every bit as naughty as young Jack making bandages for his cat out of his freshly laundered school socks. It's a shame that it all came about because you've been having trouble with your mothers. I hope you are all in better spirits this week?

I have worked four shifts in the cottage hospital now, and I am thoroughly enjoying it, I only wish I could be there more! It certainly isn't too stressful – if anything it's the opposite. It's such a small place and I'm an extra pair of hands to what they're used to working with, so although I keep busy enough I am far from rushed off my feet. But I suppose it is nice that we have a little more time to spend on keeping the patients happy. It would certainly be frowned upon in a bigger hospital, but I've taken to sitting by the patients after my shift is officially over and reading to them, or playing a game of chess. I have always thought it must be terribly dull to be in hospital, and now I have spent so much time on full bed rest myself I can say categorically that the boredom is _much_ worse than the pain. I know it's meant to be to allow all one's energy to go towards recovery, but really I think being engaged in something interesting (even if it is just listening to someone read 'Jane Eyre' aloud) is far healthier than falling into a stupor because you've nothing to do but watch the sunlight move across the floor!

In answer to your question, yes I have met both of the other nurses now. They have invited me out with them twice after work this week so we've had a chance to get to know each other a little beyond what is possible under the stern gaze of Sister Davies (she isn't really all that fierce as Ward Sisters go, but I think they must get trained in that particular stern look of disapproval, they all seem to have it don't they?). The other girls' names are Winnie and Nerys and they have been very welcoming to me, though both of them seem to love to gossip and tease. Actually, I vaguely remember Winnie from school as a roly-poly little first former with curly honey coloured hair and freckle-dusted dimples who loved skipping and wrote lots of stories about rabbits. But I was in the third form when she started so I didn't really interact with her much and although she says she remembers me too, I don't think she really does. She and Nerys met when they were both in training and bonded immediately over their mutual love of A. A. Milne. They have been best friends ever since, so when Winnie wrote to her about a vacancy here three years ago Nerys left the bright lights of Cardiff city and came out here to be a cottage nurse with her friend. She boards with Winnie and her family and in spite of their mismatched appearance (Winnie is even littler than me and is still all honey-hair and rosy cheeks while Nerys is almost as tall as Doctor Marsh and is a contrast of very pale skin and long dark hair that falls as straight as an arrow to her tiny waist when she releases it from its pins) they seem closer than most sisters I've known. It's all rather sweet.

They have taken to calling me 'Dilly', which I'm not too keen on, but they mean it affectionately so I haven't the heart to appear waspish and ask them to call me Delia, especially when it seems they are making such efforts to make me one of their little group. Winnie's nickname is Pooh bear and Nerys goes by NeeNaw, so I suppose I got off rather lightly with Dilly! Although one or other of them will inevitably start reciting that little poem about Daffadowndilly when they see me in my yellow uniform and then both of them start giggling as if it's the funniest joke anyone has ever told. I feel mean for saying it because they really are sweet girls, but it's already getting a little tiresome and I've only been there a week! I also have to watch my tongue around them because when I unthinkingly say the sorts of things I would to you their eyes go wide and Winnie claps both hands over her mouth and giggles and Nerys says 'oh Dilly you are _dreadful_ ' in a slightly awed tone, as if I've just said the naughtiest thing she's ever heard. It's nice to have company other than mam again, but I do miss you Pats. I may not really remember the time we spent together but I'm sure I was never 'dreadful Dilly' and you were never 'PeePee' or whatever daft thing Pooh Bear and NeeNaw would come up with for you.  
Nerys and Winnie are lovely people, they're just not _my_ people.

But having company and keeping busy isn't what I've been dying to tell you! Working in a hospital again really does seem to be triggering things and I'm beginning to remember little bits and pieces about my early days as a trainee nurse. I suppose you already know that I started my training in Aberystwyth? I completed my first four months there before a space opened up at The London and I was accepted for transfer.  
That was the first big argument I can remember mam and I having. She couldn't understand why I wanted to go so far, for all the reputation of The London as one of the finest teaching hospitals for student nurses. Aberystwyth is hardly on our doorstep anyway, but I think she saw my leaving Wales altogether as an act of personal betrayal that never fully went away.

Do you remember I told you in my early letters that I was afraid I was a disappointment to mam for not being more like the Delia she remembered? Well, I think I may have been wrong about that. In actual fact I'm beginning to suspect the opposite is true. I think what disappointed her was how enthusiastic I was about hearing stories of my life in London and my desire to return there even with no memory of it to give me reason to go. Mam has always been rather afraid of my adventurous nature, she'd have felt more comfortable with a quiet sort of girl as she was herself, who would sit in the parlour and sew samplers or paint watercolours (she even sent me to 'young ladies' art classes for a while – yes, that is the source of those blasted pictures of daisies and petunias on my bedroom walls!). Instead she got me, and though she doesn't love me any less (of that I am certain) it is harder for her and my childhood was full of 'Delia, don't climb on that fence, you'll fall and break a leg!', 'Delia, get away from that dog! He might bite!', 'Delia, I do wish you'd stop eating those blackberries, you'll make yourself sick and get all scratched to ribbons on those brambles'. I am still as determined as ever to get back to London where I belong, but I understand mam's point of view a little better now and I think I will be more compassionate when it comes to leaving than I was the first time around. Hopefully we'll be able to part on good terms.

I wish I had more certain stories to tell you - my nursing memories are still pretty patchy and haven't really made it beyond vague impressioned of Aberystwyth yet (and that wasn't a terribly interesting time in my career, it was all studious pouring over textbooks and volunteering for extra duty to get good references for my applications to the place I _really_ wanted to be), but the London dreams are happening more now as well, so it's only a matter of time. I think you might have been in some of them actually, though I can't be sure whether they were dreams or memories. After all I also dreamt last night that you and I were on our beach holiday and we met the walrus from Alice in Wonderland on the pier. He started telling us off because we couldn't remember the end to his poem about cabbages and kings (something about pigs in the sea? No, that isn't right. Perhaps I'd better look it up in case he makes another appearance tonight, he was really very stern about it!). I'm quite sure _that_ didn't really happen, so the other could equally be nothing more than imagination!

Love,  
Delia

... ... ...

 _Dear Patsy,_

 _I didn't tell you because it seemed too intimate somehow to write out so plainly, but in my dream you were crying. I thought it was another memory of the hospital at first because I was in bed and you were kneeling beside me with tears streaming down your face. But it can't be the hospital. My memory of that place is all bright lights being shone in my eyes and pain in every inch of skin as though I'd been sandpapered, and a fogginess in my mind like I was watching a stranger's life through a misted window or from the end of a long, long tunnel so everything arrived distorted and faint. This was different. In this dream (memory?) I was well and you weren't a stranger, you were Patsy. I can remember what I felt at the time so clearly – my heart leapt when I woke to find you there but then I realized there was something very, very wrong, and unlike in the hospital I didn't hesitate to put my arms round you when tears threatened to brim onto your cheeks. I know that's what happened, but I can't quite see you clearly, no matter how hard I try to summon the memory with my waking mind. I can just feel the fierce strength of you clutching my arms while I held you, as if I was the only thing keeping you anchored in the world, and the softness of your hair against my cheek and smell the faint scent of your perfume, mingled with the bleach you use in the course of your work. When I woke from that dream my arms felt so empty with your absence that I found myself hugging my old rag doll like a child after a nightmare. I can't help wondering what it means._

 _Maybe it wasn't a memory at all; maybe it was just a dream, putting into clear images a feeling I have had for a while now. You write such lovely, cheerful letters with nothing at all to suggest it… so why do I have the growing conviction that behind your words you are unutterably sad? It doesn't make sense, but the more I think about it and reread your letters, the more certain I am that I'm right.  
Is your sadness the same as mine I wonder? And if so what on Earth has happened to us both to cause it? Hopefully these dreams will continue and give me enough clues to start working this out, because I feel sure it's all linked somehow – the dream of you, the sadness I feel and the one I am beginning to feel certain you do too. And somewhere amid it all is that innocuous little detail of a pretty jug full of flowers._

 _I hope there is someone there with you in London who will put their arms around you and make you feel safe if you really are sad; even if that person can't be me. I can't bear the thought of you being upset and all alone._

 _Lots of love,  
Delia _


	20. Chapter 20

Dear Delia,

The cubs would absolutely adore a session on building dens! Perhaps when you return (if you still want to be involved with the group, I certainly don't mean to pressure you) we could work it into some sort of camping activity. It would be no easy thing to come up with sufficient activities for a wilderness badge in the middle of London, but perhaps we could muster up a tent or two to pitch in the community centre. I believe Fred has an old one somewhere in the shed at Nonnatus. It is probably half chewed away by rats and moths by now, but it would do if we were only putting it up indoors and I imagine the boys would find it a bit more impressive than bed sheets.

In any case they would almost certainly find it more interesting than the last activity we did! Fred decided it would be a good idea to have them all learn different types of knots and brought along a box of bits of string and a book on knot tying. I think he pictured them all making complicated sailors knots and building swings and pulleys and goodness knows what else – all far beyond the capacity of our available resources of course. In reality it turned out that Fred doesn't actually _know_ any particularly unusual sorts of knots, so after twenty minutes of puzzling over the dense, incomprehensible instructions in the book (it had one or two pictures but they were about as informative as if toddler had scribbled them at random) we gave up and I taught them to make cats cradles instead. They went along with it as well as can be expected for such energetic youngsters, but it certainly wasn't the height of entertainment for anyone present and I suspect we will need to do something that involves a bit of running around next week to make up for it!

I'm so pleased you're enjoying your work! I imagine your patients all adore you if you sit and read to them and play games. If I were in hospital I'd want to have a nurse like you taking care of me. You are quite right, being idle would be by far the worst part of the whole ordeal and having someone to talk to outside of hospital visiting hours would make the experience much more bearable. It's only since I came to Nonnatus House that I've realized how much better I like community nursing than working in a hospital – there is so much more scope for listening to the individual needs of the patient rather than expending all ones effort on the look of things. After working to my own instincts so much of the time it seems almost laughable that we should expend time and effort going round the ward kicking the wheels of all the beds to make sure they're facing the same direction when that time could be better spent actually talking to the patients in our care. Even if it is just a few words of small talk it at least gives people a chance to feel as though they are still human beings and not just a box to be ticked on a chore list.

As it happens I have been seconded to The London for the week, so the difference in the way community and hospital nurses work is currently at the forefront of my mind. As you may have guessed, I am finding it rather difficult to adjust back to working under the strict regime of nursing on a ward! I've actually broken a rule or two already, but only when it really seemed necessary. After all, when faced with a terrified little boy of three with a great gash on his head half the length of my hand, how could I _not_ make him a balloon out of a spare glove to stop him crying? I know wasting equipment that way is not looked upon kindly, but the poor little thing was half out of his mind with pain and terribly afraid of having all these strange people poking at him. Having the balloon to play with distracted him enough to allow us to check for concussion and give him the stitches he needed, and by the time he left he was smiling bravely and clutching the inflated glove as if he'd just won a prize. It seemed to me a much better way of dealing with the situation than having the parents hold him down!

In spite of the fact that I am chaffing a little under the strict rules I am actually rather glad to be here, at least on a short term basis. You see, I have been allocated to the A&E Department, and I'm not sure if you'll know it or not, but that is where you worked when you were at The London. I am on friendly enough terms with everyone here in my own right of course (after all I only worked upstairs and have done a share of emergency department work when needed), but most of the A&E girls only really know me as being your particular friend. On my arrival I felt almost like a minor celebrity because throughout the first hour or so of my shift every other nurse on the floor and even one or two of the trainee doctors (anyone more senior would of course consider it beneath their dignity to even notice who was nursing for them) found some excuse to come up to me and quietly asked after you. They are all desperate for your return – it seems you have made quite an impression! The nurses all spoke wistfully of how you were able to make even the most difficult patients - from drunken Dock workers with broken noses pouring blood to frightened little children with pens jammed in their eye sockets, stop hollering and sit still so Doctor could have a look. As for the medical students, it seems you were something of a hero to a few of them and kept them out of trouble by subtly supplying the sorts of details that Doctors are supposed to know, but that nurses almost inevitably know better.

After my first shift I was called into the Sister's office and was fully expecting that I was about to get in trouble over the 'wasting clinical supplies' issue, but instead Sister Reed wanted to talk about you. She spent a minute or two on small talk about how I was getting along at Nonnatus House and how I was finding being back at The London, which rather surprised me because she isn't generally given to idle chitchat. But then she got round to what she really wanted to know and it all made sense.

'I have been given to understand that you are in contact with Miss Busby, Nurse Mount? I haven't heard news of her since she was discharged from our care, and I'm sure you remember what a grave state she was in at that time. I don't like to see _any_ of my girls coming in on the other side of the stethoscope as it were, but Nurse Busby was one of my best and it was quite a blow to the department to lose her. Certainly she didn't always have the strictest regard for the rules, she was rather like you in that respect'  
there she broke off and gave me a stern look: 'I'm sure I needn't remind you that surgical gloves are medical equipment and not toys'. Her expression softened almost to a smile as she continued so I knew I wasn't really being scolded. 'But like you she always did it with the patients' welfare at heart, and as in the case of your little head trauma patient this afternoon, her methods usually turned out to have better results than doing things strictly by the book. So I was hoping you might tell me Nurse Mount, how is Nurse Busby doing now? Might we have cause to look forward to her return?'

I hope you don't think it too presumptuous of me (after all it isn't really my place to disclose such things without asking you first), but I told her I thought you were doing extremely well and mentioned that you had started work in your local cottage hospital with a view to returning to The London at some future date. She tried to maintain her professional expression but I could tell she was delighted by the news (I get the impression that she is really very fond of you Deels, and that she has been fretting over your condition), and once I had been dismissed and was about to leave she called back to me 'Oh and Nurse Mount? Do tell Delia I send my regards and very much hope to see her returned to us soon. Her old job is waiting for her just as soon as she is ready to take it up again'.

I thought it might please you to know that you are very much remembered and missed here, and not just by Sister Reed and myself. All the other nurses (none of whom seem the slightest bit inclined to give each other odd nicknames thank goodness) have asked me to pass on their fond regards as well, so although now you may be struggling a little with the rather unusual companionship of your colleagues I have no doubt that you will have quite a queue of people wanting to catch up with you after work when you return to London!

Winnie and Nerys sound almost unbelievable. I'm sure they are perfectly sweet people without a malicious thought between them, but I wouldn't quite know how to respond to a grown woman who referred to herself as Neenaw. (Please promise _never_ to start calling me 'PeePee'; I simply don't believe I would cope). And don't worry; you will always be Deels to me (is it alright to call you Deels? I shouldn't have assumed that just because it was before it still would be. Please tell me if you would prefer Delia! I won't think you the least bit waspish for it, it is your name after all and you should be the one to decide how it's used). I couldn't bring myself to call you DaffadownDilly in any case and besides, when you are being dreadful is usually when we have most fun! I love your unusual ideas and mischievous sense of humour and you are certainly no more dreadful than me. In fact, I think you are really a rather nicer person than I am.

And I am absolutely delighted to hear that your memories of nursing are coming back! This will make is so much easier for you to get back into working full time. With that and the glowing recommendations from both your current employer (who also just so happens to be the physician who has been managing your care so there will be no conflict of opinions there) and Sister Reed at The London you should be able to walk into any job you want and have them consider themselves lucky to get such a kind and dedicated nurse! I know it must be difficult with your mother – her expectations are so at odds with who you are. But in spite of her protective instincts I always got the impression (from how you spoke to me of her when you were here) that she was actually rather proud of what you'd made of your life and was coming to terms with your need for independence before your accident. Of course what happened will be a setback to that, but it sounds as though you are both making very positive steps in understanding each other's perspective, so perhaps when you leave this time it needn't really feel like parting at all. And it isn't the same as last time you moved away from home. This time you aren't moving to a strange city far from everything you know. You have friends here who care about you and will look out for you. Perhaps that will make the idea of your going a little easier for her? (I can offer her my personal guarantee that I will _never_ pressure you to date unsuitable young men or take you to 'dens of iniquity' or any of the other things mothers tend to worry go on in London!).

Are your dreams of London any clearer than they were to begin with? You said you thought you had dreamt of me… do you remember anything of the details of that dream? Sorry, you needn't answer that if you'd rather not. Does it seem horribly nosy of me to ask? I suppose it is just a hint of narcissism, wanting to know that your only memory of me isn't some horribly embarrassing incident (such as the time I had to be rescued from under a mountain of no-longer-clean linen when I failed to notice that my pinafore had caught on a loose nail and I pulled the whole shelf of blankets down on top of me).

I certainly hope we won't meet the walrus from Alice in wonderland on the pier! I seem to remember him being rather a dark character and certainly not someone one ought to take a stroll with. But don't worry; I am well versed in Lewis Carroll poems, should the need for them arise. We studied the book at some length in my younger days at school and the combination of bizarre surrealism and darkness always rather appealed to me above the simpler, straightforward moral tales we were so often made to read. I think the line you were looking for was 'and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings' (though the rhyme is part of a much longer poem) – just in case he should return to your dreams demanding an answer!

Love,  
Patsy

... ... ...

 _My Dearest Deels,_

 _You dreamt of me! I can't help feeling rather excited about that, though I'm not sure which makes me more nervous – the idea that is was truly a memory or that it was just a dream. After all, you didn't tell me about what you saw… was that a deliberate omission because you saw something you were uncomfortable with or was it simply too jumbled to express clearly? Will you tell me, I wonder, when you start remembering bits of our time together properly? I'm a little concerned that it will be horribly confusing for you. But I do feel as though we have grown close again over the past weeks of letter writing even without your memories of the time before - perhaps even enough so that I might dare to hope that it won't come as too much of a shock to you when you remember enough to understand everything. After all, we have been here before, have we not?_

 _Forgive me for saying so but in a lot of ways you seemed so unworldly to me when we met (I don't mean that as an insult - your ability to view the world and all its people as essentially good in spite of evidence to the contrary are part of what I love about you) that I was afraid you would be scandalized by the very idea of two women loving each other in that way. But when we did eventually confess that our feelings for each other went deeper than simple friendship you weren't fazed in the slightest by the notion of being 'a queer'. In fact, it didn't even seem to register to you. Your delight that I felt the same way seemed completely untempered by apprehension over what the world would think of us and you threw yourself into my arms without a hint of self consciousness. In spite of all the need for caution you have never seemed to think of us as being anything other than two people in love – no labels, no shame to our secret and for the most part, no regrets._

 _You told me later that when you first started to recognize your feelings for what they were and to believe that such a thing were possible you felt nothing so much as relief, because up until then you had been afraid that you were incapable of love. You told me that throughout your teens you had worried that you were broken somehow because you still preferred to read or swim or play games long after your friends had started to spend all their time discussing boys or preparing for their next date. It almost broke my heart to hear your stories of how you'd tried so hard to 'fix' yourself and take an interest in boys, as though you weren't perfect the way you were._

 _I'm not sure you'd have believed it of me Deels, but I have actually been talking over some of this with Trixie. I didn't plan to- I haven't brought up the subject since we climbed out of Sister Monica Joan's the blanket hideaway, but since we had talked about it I was a little less secretive over your letters and the other night I was sitting up in bed reading over your latest reply. For the first time I didn't take your letter off somewhere to read by myself and although I had thought Trixie utterly absorbed in her night time beauty routine (I don't know how she has the patience of an evening for all those creams and curlers and goodness knows what else) she must have noticed what I was doing because as soon as the letter was folded back into its envelope she glanced over her shoulder at me and said 'you look pleased, what news from Delia? Does she remember something?'_

 _I confess I was a little startled, I am so used to keeping this a secret and speaking in careful code about my feelings that I hadn't quite prepared for Trixie asking so casually, as if this were any other relationship (I suppose part of me still expects her to be uncomfortable with it for all her words of support last time). She must have noticed my hesitation because she came and sat on the foot of my bed. 'Come along Patsy and tell auntie Trixie all about it. Everyone's fast asleep so you needn't be afraid of being overheard. If I can't sort out my own love life you might at least let me live vicariously through yours!'  
'Oh Trixie, I'm not sure I even HAVE a love life… no, she doesn't remember yet, but she's starting to get back early memories of training, before she transferred to the London. And… well, she says she dreamt about me. Or she thinks she did, but she didn't tell me any of the details so I can't be sure if it was really a memory'.  
'Oh _PATSY _, that's so exciting! You really ought to tell her you know. Or at least drop a few hints. Otherwise poor Delia will just think she's having those dreams because she's head over heels for you without realizing you feel the same. You_ can't _let her think it's unrequited! You need to let her know that those really ARE memories and not just love sick fantasies!'_

 _What Trixie said rather hit the mark. I have spent so much time agonizing over this very thing and I know all my reasons for not telling you make sense… but now a part of me is wondering if in reality I am simply holding back because I'm afraid, and I know you deserve better than that. Perhaps Trixie is right. After all things are different now your memories are coming back to you. It seems likely that one way or another you_ will _recall the way things used to be, and if you still have feelings for me I would hate you to think it one sided. I don't ever want you to feel you are broken again._

 _I love you Deels._

 _Yours,_

 _Patsy_


	21. Chapter 21

Dear Patsy,

There's something I need to tell you, but I'm not sure how. I'm… I'm afraid, I suppose. I know that's ridiculous because you know already - of course you do, you've known all along. But I've only just worked it out and it still feels new to me, so please bear with me if through this if it comes out a little jumbled. I'll try to explain it all. You see, I've remembered something important. Or rather, some _one_ important.

My early days at The London have started coming back to me at last, and there's one thing most of my strongest recollections have in common. A girl. Time and again I get little glimpses of a blonde nurse in my memories and it makes my heart lurch every time I see her. In the time that has come back to me so far I haven't been properly introduced to her yet, I just see her across the ward or in lectures but for some reason she stands out more than everyone else around us, as if she is the only reason I bothered remembering the moment at all. And… I think I know why. I think I finally understand.

She was there on my very first day, when I arrived flustered and breathless at the lecture hall because my place at the Nurses' Home hadn't come through yet and I'd gotten utterly lost on my way from the boarding house (it looked so close to the hospital on the map but in reality there were so many little streets and I kept getting turned around in places shut off because of the rubble left over from the war). Eventually I had to ask for directions and ended up getting a lift to the hospital in the back of a fish monger's van (I really would have been late if not for his kindness, but bumping along between crates of sole and oysters was not at all the way I imagined my grand arrival in my new life and I spent the entire day terrified that I stank of mackerel).

It wasn't until I arrived in the corridor where everyone was waiting and saw all the tight clusters of happily chatting girls that it really hit me. Everyone else had already been there four months. Friendship groups had been made, everyone knew their way round the wards, everyone knew which doctors to avoid and who might lend a hand to a struggling new nurse. Everyone except me.

I had had as much training as the rest (possibly even more given how much extra time I had devoted to study in Aberystwyth), but I felt suddenly as though I knew nothing at all, and for a moment I was too shy to even think of approaching anyone. I had never really thought of myself as having an accent before, and yet amidst all those uniformly English voices I was all too aware of how different I would sound to everyone else when I opened my mouth. I know it's a silly thing to worry over but you must remember I had never spent any great length of time away from Wales and my accent was just one more thing that would make me stand out among people who already knew each other but didn't know me. I actually had a moment's doubt that I had done the right thing in coming to London at all, though I did my best to push the thought away as first day nerves. Luckily before my standing alone could begin to feel truly awkward the whole problem was put out of my mind as the doors opened and I was able to join the throng to get inside and sit down.

I found myself sitting beside a blonde girl who flashed me a warm smile as we got our books in order. It was such a little thing, but it made me feel better, as if I might not be the outsider I had feared I would be at all. After all she had chosen to sit beside me when there were plenty of empty seats elsewhere, and she was smiling at me as if she genuinely wanted to know me. I let my relief and gratitude spill onto my face as I answered her smile and she opened her mouth as if to make introductions, but before she could say so much as a hello the room was called to order and we had to be quiet and pay attention to what we were being told. She didn't just forget about the new girl sitting beside her though - later on when my pen ran out of ink just as I was trying to get down a particularly complex point she wordlessly handed me her own spare one as naturally as if we had been sitting together every day for months. I tried hard to focus on the lecture but for the first time ever I just wanted this particular bit of nursing instruction to be over so I could get on and talk to my new friend. But at the end of the lecture I had time to do no more than hand her back the pen and say 'thank you, I'd have been flummoxed without that! I shall have to bring plenty of spares in future. I'm-'  
'Nurse Busby!'  
Hearing my name in that moment, as well placed as if the interruption had been scripted that way made me jump. You'll laugh but I snapped to attention as smartly as a soldier, I was still that high strung with new-girl nerves. It was the Sister of course, calling me over to get my assignment and chastise me for not arriving early enough to come to her office before the class. She gave me a very stern lecture but said she would let me off this time since reports from my previous placement all concurred that I was generally extremely punctual and diligent, and she understood the difficulty of traversing a new city, especially one like London. 'But do not let this happen again Nurse Busby or there will be consequences. I expect nothing less than perfect time keeping from my nurses, even if it means getting up two hours early to map your route. Do I make myself clear?'  
'Yes Sister. Sorry Sister, it won't happen again'.  
'Alright then. See that it doesn't and we will say no more about it. Welcome to The London Nurse Busby'.

By the time I was given directions to my next placement and allowed to go to join the others in my group my new acquaintance was nowhere to be seen. I had hoped she would be on the same rotation as me, but alas I had no such luck and I didn't see her again that day. After that I would catch glimpses of her but never quite seemed close enough to say hello. She would always be on the other side of the dining hall surrounded by people, or I'd see her walking past in the corridor with the ward Sister or bump into her on the way to or from somewhere when we were both in too much of a hurry to do more than flash a quick smile as we went our separate ways. I didn't know her name to ask after her and I wasn't sure where she was working, though I really wanted to find her even after I started making friends with the other girls on my rotation. She seemed more dedicated than any of the other girls I'd met and I actually wondered for a while whether she was a qualified nurse and not one of us students at all, in spite of having met her in the lecture that first day. She just seemed so exactly the kind of nurse I aspired to be that I could hardly believe she was as new to this as I was.

That's all I remember about her so far, but I do know for certain that those glimpses are not all there was to our friendship. You see… I've figured it out. The sadness I mean- the thing that was missing. I know I told you that the business with the jug on Christmas morning was to do with my grandmother, but honestly I don't really think that was the case, and I suspect you know that too. It might sound crazy (but I don't think it will because you _KNOW_ , so you'll understand) but for the past couple of weeks I've been growing more and more convinced that you are sad too, and until now I couldn't work out why that could be. I told you I had dreamt of you, but I didn't tell you what it was about. Well, now I will. In my dream you were kneeling beside my bed and sobbing so hard you could barely breathe let alone speak, and I was holding you but I couldn't fix it. I couldn't make things right for you and I woke up feeling empty and so alone. I didn't want to tell you at the time because it seemed too intense, too private a moment to be written out like this even if it _was_ only a dream, but now I know what it symbolizes I feel I must.

Oh Pats, I can't believe I've been moaning all this time about my amnesia and feeling stifled by mam as if that was the worst thing in the world, and you never told me the truth of it!

I'm sorry; I'm not blaming you for not saying anything. In your situation I would have done the same thing so I truly do understand. It was kinder that way. But please tell me now Pats. The reason I got so upset over that jug wasn't to do with the flat at all was it? It was about the person that was to live there with me. Oh Patsy, how have you been writing to me so cheerfully when the loss must have felt so fresh and horrible to you every time you read my letters? You are a better person than I realized to have kept on writing and making me feel so cared for all these weeks. In spite of everything I've put you through; you're still trying to save me.

You see, I know who the blonde girl must have been, and why all my London memories seem to be centred on her. She was the girl I was moving in with. And oh Patsy… she's dead isn't she?

I've thought it over, pieced together all the little puzzles and feelings that I couldn't make sense of and this seems like the most logical answer. Why else would I be so sad about reminders of a flat I never even lived in? And why else would YOU be sad as well? Those memories were the missing link that brought it all together – the girl who I feel so very fond of, who makes my heart leap with gladness when I see her and yet leaves me with a sense of loss so strong I almost want to cry. I wasn't the only one in that car accident was I? I can't believe I never thought to ask if someone else was hurt! I feel so dreadful and self-centred. Why didn't I ask?

But now I know, someone _was_ with me, and I escaped alive while she was killed. Please tell me honestly… was it my fault Patsy? Did I cause the accident? That would explain why no one told me, it makes sense that if I couldn't remember you wouldn't want to burden me with the truth. But I'm sure you knew this day would come, so please, _please_ tell me now. I know this must be so painful for you to write about, especially to me. The two of you must have been good friends as well. But I really need to know. I asked mam to tell me about the accident weeks ago but she won't, she just says 'don't think on it cariad, it will only upset you and that's behind us now'. If she knows I know the truth now it'll only make her more determined that I shouldn't dwell on it. But I need to know what happened. Was I driving? Was she in the car or did I hit her? Oh Patsy how could I have done something so dreadful?

Who was she Pats? Please tell me about her because I can't remember. I can't remember her name, or what she liked to do in her free time or anything about her except for that glimpse of blonde hair, a friendly smile and the fact that I have this loneliness and sense of loss inside me. I hate myself for failing her like this, when she is gone and all there _IS_ is memory. So please Patsy. Help me remember her?

And oh goodness, her family! I should write to them, tell them how sorry I am. Do you think they'd want to hear from me, or would it make it worse when all this was my fault and yet I am the one who is still here while she is gone? Oh Patsy I don't know what to do. I can't make this better. No matter what I do, I can never, ever make this alright. I almost wish I hadn't regained these memories because it was easier before I figured this out. I know that's selfish of me and I'm not really sorry I know, but I don't know where to go from here. How can I ever begin to make amends?

I'm so, _so_ sorry Patsy.

Love,  
Delia

... ... ...

 _Dear Patsy,_

 _Oh God, oh God, oh God. WHAT HAVE I DONE?_

 _You said in your last letter that everyone in The London was anxious for my return and if you had told me that at any other time I would have been absolutely thrilled. But how can I go back now? How can I look her friends and family in the eye after all the pain I have caused?_

 _I don't know what else to say except I'm sorry. I'm so,_ so _sorry._

 _Love,  
Delia_


	22. Chapter 22

AN: I know the last chapter was cruel, I'm sorry! Please don't hate me for that little twist. I honestly didn't plan it that way to begin with, it just sort of... happened. It gets better though I promise :)

* * *

Oh my poor, darling Deels,

No! You've got it all wrong sweetheart, you haven't hurt anyone. No one has died and no one else was injured that day. Hasn't anyone explained to you exactly what happened? I'm so sorry Delia, I didn't know. I assumed you had been told about your accident but even if not, I would never have dreamed you'd think THIS. If I had any inkling… but I'll tell you now.

In a way it was my fault you were hurt, so if you want to blame anyone, blame me. You see… Oh there's so much to explain. Maybe I should start at the beginning. That blonde nurse you remember? That was ME Delia. All that 'you'll know me by my hair' business and I never thought to explain that your memories might tell a different story. When I was a child, my hair made me stand out. No one else I knew had red hair and I suppose I always associated it with being an outsider, so when I came to London I decided to start fresh. The day I officially started my nursing training, after the incident with the spider in my uniform, I decided to celebrate by doing something that I thought would make me feel less like school girl Patsy (after all it was only a matter of months – weeks really, since I had been doing my A-levels) and more like the Nurse Mount I aspired to be. So I went in to the first hairdresser's I saw and asked them to make me blonde. It made me feel fashionable and efficient but also unerringly normal to look like everyone else, and I stayed that way for several years. It's only relatively recently that I've decided I don't need to choose between being Patsy and being Nurse Mount and have gone gladly back to my own natural colour again.

I had struggled to fit in when I first started at boarding school and I knew what it was to feel different, so when I saw you looking so lost your first day of course I came and sat beside you. I had wanted to stay and talk to you after the lecture too – I hoped we might go out for a pot of tea after work and get to know each other a little.  
I was going to offer to show you round the town a bit and tell you some of the things I wished someone had told ME when I first started (Sister Collins will forgive you anything if you demonstrate that you're willing to work. Volunteer to do the dull or messy work unprompted and the hours spent emptying bedpans will be rewarded next time she is writing up the assignments. Keep out of arms reach of Mr Lacey on male surgical. If he _does_ make a grab for you slip the name Moira into conversation. It doesn't matter if you've never met a Moira, just find a reason to say it – it's his daughter's name and slipping it in reminds him how much he'd like to rip the offending hand off of anyone who tried pawing at her that way. You'll find he behaves himself for at least the rest of your shift. DON'T eat the fish in the dining hall. That dreadful smell in there? It isn't the drains. Eating it won't kill you, but the taste might make you wish it had).

I did wait for a while after Sister Collins waylaid you, hoping I'd be able to catch you when she was done with her monologue but it was no use. Every time I thought she was winding down she'd think of something else to tell you and I was due on the other side of the building to scrub for theatre, so eventually I had to go or risk facing the wrath of the surgeon, whatever senior nurse my tardiness had made look bad in front of him, AND (perhaps worst of all) the smug looks from the surgical students, (who were always glad to see someone other than themselves in disgrace for once).

But after all the just missing each other and exchanging glances across crowded rooms we _did_ eventually meet and over time we became very close... closer in fact than I've ever been to anyone. You are right about one thing Delia. I _have_ been sad since the accident but it isn't because anyone died. That at least I am thankful for every day. What makes me sad is that you were hurt at all, and that you were taken so far away for your recuperation. Of course I knew it made sense, you would want to be with your family at such a time and your mother would want to care for you at home, but I hated that that meant you would be gone from me, especially when I wasn't allowed to visit and you didn't even have a telephone.

I want you to know… I would have looked after you Deels, if your mother hadn't been there. Even if the seizures had continued and your memories never came back, I would have looked after you. You are my dearest friend and there is no one in this world who means more to me than you do, so any sadness you sense is simply that I miss you. And that I miss the life we had been planning together.

I should have told you this earlier, when you first wrote about finding your own flat in London, but I suppose after last time I didn't want to jinx it. Oh that sounds so ridiculous now! I'm not the superstitious type, truly I'm not, but there is a part of me that still can't help feeling that you were hurt because of me, and I suppose I was afraid of it happening again.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again. Let me explain. The Nurses' Home was downsizing and needed volunteers to take a rent allowance and find alternative accommodation. I had never lived independently (I went straight from boarding school to the Nurses' Home to Nonnatus House) and besides, I missed us being able to visit each other so easily, as we had when we both lived in the same digs (before I moved to Nonnatus House). So when you told me you were going to volunteer to move out and suggested that we should find a place together I jumped at the chance to share a home with you, just the two of us.

And we did it. We found a flat and started gathering cleaning supplies ready to give it a good scrub (it was filthy when we took it, but we saw potential beneath the layers of grime). We never had a chance to live there properly, but we had time enough to share a picnic (on a blanket on the floor as we had no furniture yet) and discuss how we wanted to decorate our new home. That's when you told me that you wanted china with a modern, geometric pattern, and that you wanted the only flowers in the room to be real ones, on the windowsill where they'd always catch the light (that's how I knew what to get you for Christmas. I never meant for it to make you sad).

But I'm meant to be telling you about the accident. After our picnic you had a shift at the hospital to get to so we headed out. Your watch had stopped and it was later than we'd realized, you were afraid you were going to be late… so I told you to take my bike. I teach the cubs cycling proficiency, I should have known better. I knew you could barely keep your saddle and yet I thought it would be harmless. I thought it would spare you a lecture from Sister Reed and would be good practice as you were planning to get a bike of your own for the commute to work anyway. But I was wrong. You were crossing the street when a car hit your bike and sent you flying into the road. Someone called an ambulance of course, but I found out afterwards that when they arrived the crew expected you to die before you reached the hospital, or else slip into a coma and never wake up; you had hit your head so hard.

And I didn't even know. I hate the thought of you being alone through all of that and I am so sorry I wasn't there with you as soon as I heard (even if you weren't awake to realize it). But you know how the rules are. Family only. So without a plausible claim to sisterhood (which sadly wouldn't wash at a hospital we have both worked at for years) or my ring on your finger (and short of cutting my hair off and calling myself Patrick that certainly wasn't an option for us) there was no way I was getting into that room. They wouldn't even tell me how you were over the phone. I wouldn't have known anything was wrong at all until you didn't come home that night if I hadn't been almost knocked off my feet by a hug from Sister Winifred on my way back from getting your keys cut. She had arrived at the scene of the accident just as the ambulance was pulling away and, seeing my bike in the road, had assumed I was the one who had been hit.

But I'm sure that's not what you want to ask about (I know how your mind works). The chap who was driving the car is completely fine, not a scratch on him and not even much of a dent to his fender, so you needn't worry on that score. And the accident wasn't your fault. He was going too fast, he didn't see you coming until it was too late. That's all there was to it. You haven't hurt anyone sweetheart. I promise.

All my love,  
Patsy

... ... ...

 _Dearest Delia,_

 _You thought you had hurt someone. I'm so sorry sweetheart._

 _When I started reading your letter I was sure you had remembered us. Right up until you asked if the blonde nurse was dead, I thought you were going to tell me that you knew who we were to each other. I couldn't tell whether you were happy about it or not, but either way I thought you truly had worked it out. But no. You were blaming yourself for the death of a girl who never even existed, and all because of my cautious tiptoeing round the truth in these letters and my ridiculous blonde phase._

 _I never told you why I dyed my hair did I? You told me often enough when I was blonde how fetching I looked, but the first time you saw me with my hair red you just stared for a while until I was afraid you hated it and was wishing I had kept it the way it was. But then you reached out and gently touched a curl with one finger tip 'yes. You look like Patsy now. It's… it's perfect. Why ever did you change it in the first place?' When you said that, it made me wonder how many times you could make me fall in love with you. Before we met I always thought it was something that just happened once (and perhaps not at all to me), but with you, it happened every day. I fell in love with you every time you took my hand, or gave me that particular impish smile of yours, or made me stop in the street and look up because you'd seen a cloud that looked EXACTLY like a squirrel dancing a polka with a chimney sweep (I could never find the things you described and I always suspected you couldn't either, that you came up with the most nonsensical images you could think of just for an excuse to stop and appreciate the sky for a moment). It still happens, every time I read your letters and hear you saying those words in my head, or see you in my mind's eye, sliding around your bedroom in stockings or reading Jane Eyre aloud to a patient._

 _So when you asked, I wanted to turn my head the half inch that would bring your hand against my cheek and tell you everything – why I went blonde, and why I wasn't anymore. But you were about to leave for work and it wasn't exactly a short story, so I just said I'd done it because I'd felt like a fresh start when I moved to London, and I kept it out of habit. I really_ did _mean to tell you everything, but somehow during the brief times I got to see you after I moved out of the Nurses' Home I could never bring myself to cause that sad look in your eyes that you get when I tell you about my childhood. Not when we were in public and I couldn't put my arms around you and remind you I survived._

 _Sometimes in the camp it wasn't the guards you had to worry about. You would think in such conditions we would all stick together, but I'm sorry to say it was not always the case. There was a particular group of boys there that took it upon themselves to take control of the other children. They were mostly in their early teens – certainly none was older than 13 or 14 and most were younger, but to a little girl of my age among so many they might as well have been grown men.  
Mostly it was fairly harmless. They just made the rest of us call them all 'sir' and do whatever small chore they demanded of us, but they would also 'confiscate' anything worth taking from those foolish enough to let it be seen (generally this meant food and there was little enough of that at the best of times) and they were always on the lookout for reasons to single someone out for 'special treatment'. _

_When I first arrived at the camp my hair was almost waist length and the same bright copper shade it is today, which made me rather stand out among the blondes and browns of the other children. I don't suppose this would have mattered too much on its own, but in spite of the fact that I had yet to so much as glimpse the spires of Westminster, I had the kind of refined English accent that goes hand in hand with a well born socialite mother and a ship broker father with sufficient funds to procure an expensive education for his daughters, and I was slower than most to catch on to the camp slang that would have helped me blend in. All this led to my nickname, and my victim status. The boys took to calling me 'London' (I wasn't in the least bit cockney, but I think the entire group's knowledge of London was that it was 'where the king lived' so they assumed everyone there must be terribly posh) and mimicked my speech at every opportunity. I didn't really help myself in the beginning – a wiser child would have bowed her head and accepted whatever they doled out in the hopes that they'd get bored. But, being me, I argued back in my prim little voice and made it worse. Then one of them had the bright idea to take the joke a step further and, grabbing my red plait so hard I almost lost my balance shouted out 'hey look, London's burning!'_

 _After that 'London's burning' became a standing joke and I knew that if I heard anyone start up that old nursery rhyme then it was time to run, because by the time they reached the line 'pour on water' it was inevitably going to end badly for me. Sometimes I got away, but often I didn't and it went from buckets of dirty water being thrown (to 'put out the great fire of London') to lit matches and cigarettes being waved dangerously near my head. After one came a little too close and singed my hair rather badly my mother cut it short for me to try and keep it from happening._

 _It didn't work of course- not straight away. But eventually I learned to survive. I dropped my refined speech, cropped my hair shorter still until it was barely longer than the boys' and bloodied a nose or two until they learned I was not so easy to push around anymore (I wonder if that would shock you? I'm not proud of it Deels, but in that environment what mattered was what you did, and with those bullies there was no other way but to use the language they understood. It makes your tapioca story look rather tame by comparison doesn't it? And there you were, afraid of shocking me with_ your _naughtiness)._

 _After the war was over and life became rather more sedentary my hair still singled me out from the rest. I learned to blend in faster at school than I had in the camp– I didn't need prompting to train my speech back to the refined English I had learned at my mother's knee, but still I wasn't normal. Although I had done my best to arrange it into something approaching a style, my hair was still the short, choppy mess I had made it to gain status with the camp boys (hairdresser's scissors had not exactly been easy to come by so I had made do with whatever cutting edge I could find at the time), and none of the other girls in my school had stories like mine. Most were the children of wealthy families whose greatest privation on a day to day basis was rationing and black outs. One or two had been evacuees or had been in London through the bombing and of course everyone knew someone (however tenuous the connection for some of them) who had died, but even so, it seemed a far cry from camp life. It was as though we had lived through entirely different wars and it took me some time to adjust. Other girls seemed almost to make a competition of their suffering in the war, each girl trying to outdo the others in how hard she had had it, but somehow I knew without ever being told that my own story would be different._ I _was different. I was too defensive, too used to responding to any perceived threat (and even overtures of friendship were suspect for a while) with prickliness, if not outright hostility. As time went by I learned to become the superficial, social creature that a girl's boarding school demands, but although I made a few casual chums and gained some acceptance as Captain of the hockey team and even Head Girl later on, I don't think any of them quite forgot the wild creature I had been when I arrived._

 _So when I got my acceptance letter for the nursing course at The London Hospital I decided that it was time to recreate myself. Patsy was insecure and awkward; she had few friends and a head full of nightmares from her childhood that were better forgotten. So I left her behind. On my first full day in London I went to a salon and swapped my now despised flame-red hair for a smooth, fashionable (but ultimately unremarkable) blonde, because this time I wouldn't make the old mistakes again. I was starting fresh as Nurse Mount, the robust, competent no-nonsense embodiment of all I had wanted to be when I was a helpless child watching disease claim the lives of those I loved most._

That's _why I was blonde when you met me, and the reason I am not blonde to this day is_ because _I met you. As our friendship developed I found my walls slipping away one by one and I discovered that I hadn't discarded my true self at all, she was still there underneath it all, and what's more I was beginning to discover that I was alright with that._

 _And so because of you, when I made my next big change and retrained as a midwife then moved on to Nonnatus House, I did it without the armour I had relied on before. I went as Patsy (or at least as someone who was beginning to be the Patsy I am now), red hair and all. In a way, I really have you to thank for the fact that I have a family here at Nonnatus and that I am able to connect with them on more than just a superficial level. You called me your guardian angel Deels, but in reality, you are mine. If I_ am _'saving' you as you say, it is only because you saved me first._

 _I wish I could tell you this story for real so you would understand how important you are and know that our closeness has never been one-sided. But how could I do that to you now, after how upset you must have been these past days? I answered your letter the moment I read it of course, but even so the wait for your own letter to arrive and the reply to be sent must have been awful for you. What you needed was reassurance, not me bringing up sad stories of my past. Don't doubt it though, I_ will _tell you Deels, one day soon. There are so many things I should have said sooner. If I had you would never have gone through the last few days thinking you had caused the death of a friend.  
But I'm going to change that now. Not all at once, not when you still don't really know who we are to each other. But I can go gently and make a start. No more holding back. A life time habit will be hard to break and I might make mistakes, but I'm going to try. I promise._

 _All my love,  
Patsy_


	23. Chapter 23

Dear Patsy,

Do you truly mean it? I honestly haven't hurt anyone? Oh Pats I could kiss you I'm that glad! I know I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions the way I did but I talked myself into it and once I was worked up I was just so utterly convinced that I couldn't imagine any other explanation. I drafted half a dozen letters to the family of the blonde nurse expressing my grief and regret for what had happened, and all the time not only was she alive and well, she was _you_! If I hadn't had such a tense week and upset so many people with my dark mood over the last few days it would be almost comical to think how very wrong I got it.

But oh dear, I'm afraid I really _have_ upset people. Winnie and Nerys aren't speaking to me anymore unless it is strictly necessary on the ward (and then it's 'Nurse Busby', even when we are well out of earshot of the patients). At least Nerys isn't. Winnie still speaks if I approach her, but only in a whisper and she flinches whenever I catch her eye as if she's expecting to be hit, which is much worse than Nerys' silent glares. I truly didn't mean to snap at her but I've been feeling so horribly upset and guilty these past few days and Nerys and Winnie's brand of bubbly good cheer has been rather jarring. I almost didn't go in for my shift at all the day I posted your letter, but after all I wasn't ill, and I reminded myself of all the horrors nurses must have worked through during the war – losing family and friends and never knowing if their loved ones away fighting were safe, but still turning up every day to tend their patients no matter their own circumstances. So I followed the advice I feel sure you would have given me, put a brave face on it and carried on. At first I thought it was going to be fine – I arrived at the hospital early and I was even feeling optimistic that caring for people who were ill might help assuage my guilt just a little. And I think it really would have been alright if it was just the patients I had to deal with, but I was on shift with Winnie that day. Of course the poor girl had no way of knowing how I was feeling, what happened wasn't her fault at all, really.

I was pinning on my cap in the Nurses' room when Winnie came skipping in (that isn't a turn of phrase, she actually skipped like Dorothy on the yellow brick road – goodness knows what Sister Davies would have said if she'd seen such behaviour from a nurse in uniform, but luckily for Winnie she was safely ensconced in her office). She danced up behind me and threw her arms around me so enthusiastically that she knocked my hands as they were setting the final pins in place and sent my hair tumbling back down over my shoulders and my cap fluttering to the ground like an injured butterfly.  
'Oooh Dilly you look grumpy-wumpy today. Why so glum my sweet Daffy chum?'  
'Oh it's nothing really Winnie, I've just-'  
But she wasn't really listening and stopped me with a pouting look 'no no no, Dilly I told you! We're friends; that means you get to call me Pooh Bear. I'm only Winnie to my parents. Well, and boys, but-' she broke off and giggled 'well _boys_ , they hardly count do they?'  
'Alright, fine Wi- Pooh Bear. I'm just working through some difficult memories at the moment, that's all'.  
'Well let's turn that frowny-face around and then you'll feel better. No one can feel sad when their mouth is smiling!' She was still standing behind me with her chin perched on my shoulder watching me in the mirror, and as she said that last bit she reached round to put a finger in each corner of my mouth and pulled it into a silly grin shape. I'm afraid that was just too much for me and I only just contained the urge to bite her fingers. Instead I shook my head to dislodge her hands and shrugged her off me rather more brusquely than was really necessary 'for heaven's sake Winnie Gordon, you are a grown woman. Would you please stop prodding at me and let me _be_. Good grief can you not see that I just need some space? You can't force a body to be happy!'.  
I felt mean as soon as the words were out and I saw her leap away from me. It was as though the kitten she had just been stuffing into dolls clothes had morphed into a tiger and tried to bite her arm off. Oh Pats, she looked so _betrayed_ , as though it had never occurred to her that anyone in the world could be so cruel as I had just been to someone who was, after all, only trying to help. Her big brown eyes filled with tears and she backed off so quickly she almost collided with the door frame.  
She barely spoke a word to me all the rest of the day and she must have met Nerys for lunch because when I saw her at the end of the day she didn't give me her usual two handed wave or sing out ' _good_ evening Daffo-Dilly! Where's Pooh Bear?' as she normally would when I came out first. Instead she just glared hard at me and marched straight past into the building in search of her friend.

Thank goodness I am still only working three days a week and I have only had to make it through one shift since that day (with Nerys), though I have seen Winnie and Nerys out about the village once or twice and each time they have very pointedly averted their eyes and almost imperceptibly increased their pace to make it clear that I shouldn't think myself off the hook. I tried to apologise as soon as I said it of course, but I was still feeling so dreadful and it made me too weary to try very hard with them just then, so until now I have just let them be cross. There is still a part of me that thinks it is ridiculous for grown up women to behave in such a manner, but now I know that I didn't cause the accident and best of all that all the people I love are well, I am feeling almost euphoric with relief and quite ready to be Dilly and play nice again (especially when my return to London finally seems to be within reach, so I know I shan't be stuck being Dilly forever!). So today I went out and bought a little teddy bear with curly fur and big soppy eyes to give Winnie as an apology present. I even went so far as to get out my old water colours and paint her a card with a picture of a cross eyed teddy holding a big bunch of daffodils and the words 'I'm beary sorry I was cross' on the front (oh Pats please don't judge me too harshly! I know it is the most trite, insipid gesture imaginable but for Winnie I think it will be just right and for all their faults I don't want to upset the two people who have been nicest to me here, or lose them as friends).

Patsy… you don't _really_ think you were to blame for my getting hurt do you? It may have been your bicycle but you certainly aren't to blame for my poor cycling skills. I'd hate to think you've been feeling as guilty over this as I have felt for these last few days, especially when it must have been simply dreadful for you anyway. I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you and I don't even have most of our memories yet. How much worse must it have been for you? So please, please don't blame yourself! If anything it would have been _more_ likely had I been on foot, I'd have been in such a blind hurry to be on time!

I'm so sorry they wouldn't tell you anything after the accident. I don't see why you can't assign a pal as next of kin - why should it only be bonds of blood or marriage that count after all? It would have made so much more sense if they could have called you when I was taken to the hospital. Of course I'd have wanted mam to know, but she was so far away it was hours and hours before she could get there and if it was as you say and they truly thought I wouldn't survive, I might have been dead before she'd reached me, while you were only minutes away.  
But although it means I can't have your ring on my finger to declare you my family to the world, I am still glad you are Patsy and not Patrick. If you had been a chap I'm sure we never would have had half the fun we've had together and I wouldn't give up those memories for anything!

That's the other thing - I DO have memories of us together now! Only the early ones, but it's such fun getting to see our whole friendship developing all over again! I remember the day we met properly for the first time. Do you recall? All that time I had spent keeping an eye out for you on the wards and round the hospital (even on the street when I passed the Nurses' home), and when it came to it I was taken quite by surprise.

I'd been at The London maybe two or three weeks and I'd become acquainted with the other girls I worked with – at least enough so that I had someone to sit with during breaks and to tell me if my stocking seams were crooked, but I didn't feel quite like I was really one of them yet so I was thrilled when they asked me along to a dance they were attending one evening. As luck would have it I wasn't on shift until the following afternoon so I agreed gladly and hardly noticed the casual 'bring your chap along' that was added to the end of the invitation. What I didn't realize was that Dot and Gertie had both recently starting seeing young men and were viewing this as a chance for a date. It seemed alright at first because Trudy arrived to pick me up as dateless as I was, and for the first 15 minutes or so of the dance we sat together and chatted companionably while the other two were off with their chaps, but when I asked if she fancied dancing (the music was lively and seemed not the sort to really require a partner) she laughed and shook her head as if she found me charmingly naive. 'Oh Delia, have you never done this before? Of course we mustn't dance! We just sit here and _watch_ the dancing with a hopeful look. It works every time, we're bound to get asked soon. Yes look, there's a chap watching us, he'll come over in a minute. If we were actually _dancing_ he could hardly come and ask us to dance could he? Look tell you what, since this is clearly your first time you can have first dibs. You smile invitingly, I'll pretend to be looking for something in my bag, that way he'll talk to you not me when he comes over. All you have to do is smile and nod to whatever he says'.

I suppose maybe I _was_ naive because I'd had no idea that we had been sitting there as part of a calculated ploy to get a man interested. The boy who was even then approaching, just as Trudy had said he would was handsome enough I suppose, but I wasn't the least bit interested in dancing with him. I had come out to get to know my colleagues, not flirt with junior police officers! But Trudy was watching me expectantly and for some reason I found myself taking his hand and going off to the dance floor when he asked me. The hand in question was rather clammy and the man (whose name was Ernie) spent the entire length of that song and the next telling me about his new car and the relative merits of different types of engine and tyres as if he expected me to be terribly impressed, but honestly I couldn't make head nor tail of any of it. As soon as seemed polite I extricated myself and, pleading a blister, went back to the table. By that time Trudy had found a partner of her own of course, but sitting alone seemed preferable to any more car talk and I had no real desire to flirt with any of the men present, so I rebuffed the advances of the few other lads who came to ask and waited for my friends to come back. And waited.

By about 9.15 I was bored of sitting alone and was feeling just about ready to call it a night and head back to the boarding house. I was just looking round for Trudy, all ready to make my excuses and bid her goodnight, when I spotted Ernie standing at the bar. He was quite a bit the worse for drink now and was leering over a pretty blonde girl who was sitting there alone. She was leaning away from the proprietary hand he had placed on her knee and clearly wanted him to leave her be, but he didn't seem to be taking the hint. I actually got as far as standing up and preparing to march over there to fend him off with a few sharp words and, if necessary, a well placed slap but it turned out I wasn't needed because at that moment the girl straightened up and turned to him with a look of such absolute contempt that he backed off a step in surprise. I wasn't close enough to hear what she said to him but a moment later he had removed the offending hand, moved back to a respectful distance and appeared to apologise to the girl before making his slightly unsteady way back to his table of jeering friends.

I'd been watching the scene unfold from a few yards away, utterly impressed, but it wasn't until the girl turned back to the bar that I saw her profile and realized that she was familiar. It was _you_ , that same girl I'd been looking for ever since she lent me her pen on my first day! I was so excited to finally have found you that I forgot that you might not remember me from the one lecture we had sat together in and went and slid into the recently vacated seat beside you at the bar without another thought. At first you turned to me with a stern frown, obviously thinking Ernie had given in to his friends' taunts and come back for another go (I can remember thinking how I'd hate to be a badly behaved patient on your ward and be subjected to such a look!). But when you saw it was me your expression changed to one of genuine warmth and welcome and I couldn't help bursting out 'oh it really _is_ you! I'm so glad! I was almost ready to hire a private investigator to track you down. I can't tell you how tricky it is trying to find someone when all you know about them is that they have a nice smile and carry an extra pen to lectures!'. Then I remembered that you might not know what I was talking about so I added 'oh, I mean… hello, I'm Delia. I think we met in a lecture once and I've been hoping to run into you. May I sit here?' (though of course I already was). I was probably grinning at you like a fool, but you beamed back as if we'd known each other forever and said 'hallo Delia, my name's Patience, but everyone calls me Patsy. It's lovely to finally meet you properly!'

After that I didn't mind that the girls I had come with seemed to have all but abandoned me. I stayed sitting at the bar with you instead, exchanging stories from the wards and swapping the rumours we had both heard about things that had happened in the hospital before we started, all of which more senior students had solemnly sworn were true as gospel (the patient that had, over the course of four days, managed to steal and eat 300 cotton swabs for no discernible reason and who had only been fingered as the culprit when his bedpan was found to be full of white fluff. The Matron who had drunk too much sherry one Christmas and had ended up singing 'ode to joy' at the top of her lungs and trying to waltz round the ward with a hernia patient after midnight). We ended up laughing so much I hardly noticed the time passing.

We seemed to have so much more in common than the other girls I had made friends with. Dot and Gertie and Trudy were wonderful fun and I would certainly love to see them again if they are still at The London, but they didn't seem to want to be nurses for the same reasons I did and it made me feel as though I had to tone down my enthusiasm for everything I was learning in their company (when I asked them what had made them join Trudy declared 'nurses marry doctors, everyone knows that!' Dot said 'it's the uniforms. Chaps go quite moony for a girl in uniform!' Gertie just shrugged and said 'it was this or sewing school and I never could get the hang of button holes'. I'm sure they must have had SOME sense of vocation or they wouldn't have stuck with such a job, but their answers disappointed me even so).

I know we met up quite often after that on our free afternoons, for a pot of tea and scones or even just a walk in the park, but the time I remember most clearly is the day I finally got to move into the Nurses' home. I had been warned that a pipe had burst in what was to be my room shortly before I arrived (which was why there was such a delay in getting my place) and as such the carpet had been removed and their might still be rather a musty smell. I was delighted to be moving in with the other nurses, but a little apprehensive from the description. In all honesty I was expecting a grim little cell with bare dusty floorboards and a smell of rot. Instead I hauled my suitcase up the last flight of stairs and nudged the door bearing my name open to find you standing on a chair re-hanging the curtains in a spotlessly clean room that smelt slightly of polish and bleach and not a bit of damp.  
'Morning morning! These were a little water marked I'm afraid, but I've given them a good wash and the floors have had a decent going over as well. The rug is from my room as the floor seemed a little chilly without it, but if you don't like it I'll take it away again. I was going to get flowers to make the place a little less austere, but I'm afraid I didn't have time in the end. I _did_ manage to get my hands on an excellent bottle of scotch, a couple of the biggest éclairs you have _ever_ seen and a spanking new deck of cards though. I thought perhaps you might like to have a little house warming after our shift tonight? I know I found my first night here a little strange, so perhaps the company would be welcome?'  
It _was_ quite a bare little room, but at that moment nothing had ever seemed further from austere. All I saw was the meticulously scrubbed and polished floor with its bright, inviting rug beside the bed, the freshly washed curtains and you making it all happen, and it was the friendliest place I had ever been.

Do you think we might share a flat again one day? I understand completely if this whole affair has put you off the idea, but the notion of getting to spend every day with my best friend just seems so wonderful, I'd hate to think this accident had spoiled it forever and I suppose I've been thinking that if you were willing to move out of Nonnatus House once, maybe you could be again.  
Just think of it Pats. Our very own flat! We could talk and talk, and maybe get a record player, and there would be no curfews as there were in the Nurses' home (not that we obeyed them of course, but in our own flat we wouldn't even have to sneak into each other's rooms after lights out). It would be such fun! And of course I would bring my jug to put on our very own windowsill and this time _I'd_ be the one to buy _you_ flowers to put in it (they are still coming every two weeks, a new assortment of beautiful colours that cheer me up no end whenever I see them).

Do say you'll think about it?

Love,  
Delia

... ... ...

 _Dear Pats,_

 _Somehow it never for a moment occurred to me that your sadness might just be for_ me _and not caused by some other, tangential tragedy_. _Of course I knew that you cared for me and were sorry for what had happened – you've been such an unfailingly good friend since I was hurt that there's no way I could have doubted it; but even so I never dreamt that I was so valued by you, even as I came to realise how important you were to me. Now it seems that my eventual recall of our friendship in its entirety is inevitable, I am impatient for it, because I think... I_ know _that when it returns, everything else... all those feelings I've been unable to make sense of... will fall into place. There is something about us that goes beyond the ordinary Pats, and whatever shared experience between us has caused it, I want to know._

 _I've taken to carrying your photo round with me in my pocket, to remind me of you, and hopefully to help push my brain into making those last few missing connections. I like having you with me. I wish I was with you for real._

 _Love,_  
 _Delia_


	24. Chapter 24

AN: I know, I know, this is so late! I work til 8pm on a monday (then cycle home) so I just got back. Sorry if anyone was waiting! :)

* * *

My Dearest Patsy,

I hope you aren't alarmed at receiving a letter out of turn like this, especially as my last one is probably only just being delivered as I write this. But I couldn't wait a whole week to tell you. Or even another day.

Pats, I remember. Not everything, yet, but enough. I remember _YOU_.

I mean, I _really_ remember you. Oh my sweetheart, how could I ever have failed to recognize you in those early memories, whatever colour your hair? But the blonde girl was you and now I know that it's as though I've placed a vital missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle and I finally have enough of the picture to work out what it shows. I seem to be recalling more of my recent past all the time, much faster now than it was to begin with. I remember sitting my final Nursing Exam and going out afterwards with a huge group of girls (23 others, unless I miss my guess) all in that odd relieved-but-tense period between finishing the last of our assessments and finding out whether we had passed and become qualified nurses. I remember rescuing a box of kittens from an old bomb site, signing up with St John's Ambulance, winning the egg and spoon race at a charity fundraiser, and I remember countless other mundane, utterly ordinary, miraculous days that until recently I thought I might never recall at all. But the more I've remembered about my life and friends in London, the more I have realized that my memories of you are not like my memories of shrewd Trudy (who taught me the unlooked for skill of catching boys' eyes in bars) or Geordie Joan (who was my different-sounding ally among all the identical accents at the hospital), or any of the other girls I've been close to through the years, and it made me wonder.

Then last night I dreamt of Brighton and woke up with my heart hammering and your name on my lips. I know now that you weren't just a girl I volunteered with or even simply a good chum as I was given to believe by mam, back in the days when even my own name tasted unfamiliar on my tongue. For some reason I never questioned who we were to each other after that, even though when I look back on the past few months it seems obvious that I have been falling in love with you all over again since your very first letter. No doubt any other girl my age would have realized it long before now, but for me there has only ever been you, so before I remembered some of our time together I had nothing to measure my feelings against.

I wonder if that day in Brighton meant as much to you as it did to me? You mentioned it after I wrote to you about Susan so I know you remember at least some of it. For me every detail feels as sharp as if it had just happened.

We had spent the whole week planning it – deliberating over outfits, checking train times and maps and deciding exactly what we were going to include in the afternoon. When the big day finally arrived we stepped out of the Nurses' home looking as though we were going somewhere far grander than a little travelling fair, but somehow dressing up made it feel all the more exciting and we had truly gone all out. We took a picnic supper to eat while we were there (neither of us much fancied filling up on fairground food, although our sandwiches were naturally to be accompanied by the candy floss or paper bags of cinder toffee that we would purchase from the sweet stalls) and caught a train due to pull into Brighton station just after one o clock in the afternoon, which we thought would give us plenty of time to enjoy the rides and stalls before we had to head home. I had even arranged for Joan Harris to leave her window unlatched for us, just in case we didn't get back to the Nurses' home until after curfew. We thought of everything. At least… almost everything. After all that planning we were let down at the last hurdle, because it turned out that in my giddy excitement I had failed to take proper note of the dates and the fair didn't actually open until the following day.

I was crushingly disappointed and felt more than a little foolish. All that excitement, the train fare, the time we had spent rattling along in a crowded, noisy carriage (not to mention the fact that I had dragged you all the way to Brighton on your first day off in two weeks) only to be confronted by closed tents, shuttered stalls and silent, covered rides. You would have thought there would at the very least be people around, setting the place up or even just keeping an eye on their stalls but the site seemed quite deserted. I think you must have noticed how downcast I was because you didn't grumble or sigh at me for getting my days mixed up, you just looked around as though you had never been more pleased about anything than you were about that still, abandoned fairground and said 'come on Deels, let's have a wander round anyway. There's something rather thrilling about having the place to ourselves. It all seems bigger somehow, don't you think?'  
So we walked among the striped tents and stalls that would, by the following evening, be filled with light and noise and the smell of frying onions, and talked. We were about halfway through our second slow circuit of the site when you stopped beside a small, peaked marquee that claimed to be a 'House of Mysteries' and glanced around quickly. Before I had quite realized what you were doing you had given me a mischievous grin, grabbed my hand and pulled me through the half-unlaced flaps into the reddish twilight of the tent. 'I've always wanted to get a good look in one of these. I went to one once with a girl from school, but of course unlike me she'd seen it all a dozen times before and she got bored after five minutes so I didn't get to watch much. It would be a frightful shame to waste an opportunity to see how it's all done!'

It was true that it was very interesting to have the chance to look closely at sights that were usually kept at a distance, but I could hardly bring myself to care about the hidden pulleys and mirrors rigged up around the tent ready to create the show's illusions, or even the enormous 'genuine dragon's egg' sitting in pride of place above the stage (it was part of a performance I had seen before that involved someone in full dragon costume bursting out and breathing fire at the delighted young audience, but in that lighting it looked suspiciously like papier-mâché and poster paint), because my whole awareness was fixated on the fact that you had not yet let go of my hand. Every nerve ending tingled at the contact and I couldn't help thinking how wonderful it was to walk along with you through that dusky tent, fingers laced like any pair of lovers. I found myself lingering over each article, no matter how tawdry or unimpressive, simply to put off the moment when we would step back out into the public eye and I would be forced to let you go. It seemed to me that you felt the same, although neither of us mentioned it and when eventually we _did_ duck back through the entrance way we released hands as casually as if it were quite by chance that we should do so at that moment.

After our illicit peek at the inner workings of the 'Mysteries' we rather lost our awe of the fairground and looked in to several more of the tents and stalls we passed. As soon as I caught sight of the Merry-go-Round (it was always my favourite part of a fair) I ran to it and clambered up onto one of the fine, high stallions, gazing out at the glittering sea from my new vantage point. I confess I rather hoped you would climb up behind me on the broad saddle and put your arms around me the way I had seen young sweethearts do on such rides in the past, but instead you swung gracefully up onto the back of a neighbouring horse and gave it a tap with your heels as though you really expected it to respond to the command.

I was beginning to feel hungry by this point so we stayed up on our mounts to share our picnic, passing the packets of sandwiches and hard boiled eggs across the gap between us and pretending our apples were coated in toffee like real fairground food. It was such a pleasant place to sit and watch the world go by that we probably would have stayed a good while, had not a man in a flat cap spotted us and started running down towards the fairground, waving his hands and yelling at us to 'git away wi ya, we're not open til tomorra!'

Now I'm sure we could have climbed down calmly and given the man a dignified apology and explanation – no doubt he'd have accepted it gruffly (but probably not unkindly) and seen us on our way. But instead we scrambled off the horses and ran for it as though he had released a pack of angry dogs on us, in spite of the impracticability of high heels for running. By the time the fairground was out of sight we were giggling helplessly and clutching our sides, and must have looked quite a fright to passersby. Thank goodness Matron wasn't around to see it!

So that was that as far as the fair was concerned, but it wasn't late and we decided to stay and make the most of Brighton while we were there. In the end we didn't get back to the station until just before the last train was due to depart, and we were the only passengers in our carriage when we eventually began to wind our way back towards London. We were both tired and I found myself quite naturally resting my head against your shoulder as we left the city lights behind us. I think I may have dozed a little, but even after I woke up I didn't open my eyes or raise my head because being 'asleep' seemed like a wonderful excuse to lean against you and breath in your Patsy smell (in case you're wondering it is bleach and laundry soap, old books and lavender, and something indefinable that is uniquely you). When the train jolted I used the opportunity to snuggle closer and let my hand rest over yours on the seat between us. I felt very daring, but rather than pulling away to a respectable distance you turned towards me a little and planted a feather-soft kiss on the top of my head. That was when I knew for sure that you felt as I did, although we still hadn't talked about it. I felt so happy that I never wanted the train ride to end, and in spite of the crick in my neck and an increasingly urgent need to use the bathroom I couldn't bring myself to move until the train arrived in our station and you gave me a gentle shake and murmured 'we're back Deels, let's get you home to bed'.  
From that day to this I was never sure if you knew that I was awake for that kiss.

Oh Patsy. March is too far away. I know we had a visit all planned, but it seems a life time away and I truly can't wait that long. I imagine by now you are terribly impressed with how composed I am being – writing you a letter rather than rushing off all harum-scarum to London and turning up on your doorstep without warning. Well, don't be. After my dream last night I didn't even wait until it was light out before I started packing. In all honesty it was a wonder I remembered to change out of my pyjamas, let alone prepare a case!

Oh but you needn't worry, it wasn't like last time, when I arrived at the station with nothing but a paper bag of peppermint creams to my name. You see, since that rather spectacularly poorly executed surprise visit I have been doing my homework a bit more (not because I was expecting to run off to London with no warning again, truly I wasn't. It just made me feel better to have plans in place ready for the day I would come home). I'd been back to the station and talked to a very helpful girl at the ticket office who got out a map and showed me exactly where the station I needed was and how much it would cost to get there. She'd never heard of Nonnatus House, but I recognized some of the bigger roads on the map and thought that if I could get myself to the East India Dock Road there would be someone around who could point me in the right direction from there. I even got a recommendation of a quaint little cafe run by the girl's maiden aunt which let out the upstairs rooms in the manner of a bed and breakfast ("nothing fancy mind, but it's not too dear and it's clean and respectable, and auntie May only takes ladies so as there's nothing to be afeared for a girl on her own"), so I wouldn't have to make any imposition on the nuns. So you see it was all arranged.

But of course it was no use, because the one thing I didn't plan for was mam. She took one look at the case and her expression just changed. She looked so hurt and afraid beneath her stern frown that I felt dreadful for considering it, although I am perfectly well now and there is no reason I shouldn't take a train alone. I expected her to argue with me, or tell me off as though I were still a truculent child (I was prepared for that). But she didn't. She crossed over to me in three quick strides, set the case aside and cupped her hand beneath my chin so I had to look her in the eye then said simply 'Please Delia. Don't.'  
I tried to explain to her that I wasn't running away, it was just that my memories of London were returning and I was sure that if I could be in the places I used to know and speak to the people that knew me there I could get the rest of the missing time back. I explained that I knew where I was going and had a place I could stay. She _almost_ waivered when I told her I was meeting you (my mother has gained a great deal of respect for you after the way you have faithfully kept up a weekly correspondence and cheered me up so much with your letters), but then she asked whether you were meeting me at the station and why on Earth a sensible young lady like you would encourage me to rush off to London without a word of it to my own mother, and I had to confess that you didn't actually know I was coming. I knew it was hopeless as soon as I said that. Mam's uncertain frown changed to a look that said 'my impertinent daughter is about to get swept away on another of her thoughtless flights of fancy and she's got another think coming if she expects to get away with it'.

She didn't disagree with my argument that coming to London would help with recall, but she absolutely refused to see the urgency of it and wants us to plan it all out and take a trip there together one weekend when the weather improves. I couldn't think of any acceptable reason to insist on going at once, but if I did things her way then when I _eventually_ got to come to London there would be a schedule to follow and explanations to be made for everything and seeing you would involve a rather formal 'afternoon tea' meeting in a cafe somewhere, with a peck on the cheek and an 'oh how delightful to see you again, it was frightfully good of you to write', and mam sitting there at the centre of it all making small talk. That will be all very well one day (because of course I want the two people I love best to have the chance to know each other) but not right now. Not this time. I need to see you properly first, because although I KNOW that what I feel is true, I don't think I'll be truly alright until I'm holding you in my arms and I can't do that with my mother watching my every gesture.

I'm sorry I haven't told her the truth Pats. I hope you know it isn't that I don't want her to know about you. I so wish I could tell her, but she just wouldn't understand. I'm afraid she might try to stop me being in contact with you at all if she knew the real reason I wanted to visit so suddenly (though she'd think she was doing it for my own good). I haven't mentioned it before, but she actually rather disapproves of Nerys and Winnie because she says they are closer than is natural or healthy for girls their age. She tuts whenever she sees them walking down the road with their heads together and their arms linked and makes pointed comments about how neither of them ever walks out with a young man and says that 'they'll end up old spinsters if they don't watch out'. I don't want her to look at me that way Patsy, I couldn't bear it, not after how much better things have been between us recently. Besides, now I've been in this accident mam is even less likely to accept the way I feel for you. Since I now have a history of head trauma she'd probably view this as a sort of madness brought on by the accident and phone for the Doctor, and the consequences of that don't bear thinking about for either one of us. But I think perhaps you have always known that better than I did.

I'm sorry I used to get so frustrated by your caution in public Pats. I still hate that we can't dance together on evenings out, or walk hand in hand down the road like other couples do, but I understand now why you always looked so fearful of my boldness. Living with mam again has reminded me that people _do_ notice such things and judge them, so although I want nothing more than to drop everything and run into your arms, I will be the cautious one this time. I have unpacked my case and am obediently in the process of planning a weekend in London with mam. But I still need to see you.

So please Patsy, will you come and visit me? I know you will have to agree time off with Sister Julienne and it might not be immediate, but will you come soon? Just as soon as you can manage, because I need to know that what I remember, that what I _feel_ is really true. Or at least, I know it's true for me, but I need to see you and hold you and know that it is true for you too, because sometimes words simply aren't enough and now I know that this ache of longing is and always was me missing you, I can't bear it.

It doesn't take too long to get to the coast by train from here; we could even still have our seaside holiday. Or we can just stay here if you prefer – I've asked mam and she says she's willing for you to come and stay a while if you'd like to (though she says I mustn't pester you over it just because I'm so desperate for reminders of London, and I told her I wouldn't. This letter doesn't count because 'reminders of London' have nothing to do with the reason I am pestering for a visit). I don't mind what we do or where we go just as long as I get to see you.

Let me know when to expect you as soon as you get this.

All my love,

Delia.

p.s, I've just remembered that I asked about your boyfriend. Oh Pats how embarrassing, however did you manage to answer so composedly? You really are a sort of angel, and maybe nobody else will ever know, but I do. I know and I am so glad.


	25. Chapter 25

_To my dearest Delia,_

 _I'm sorry if this is hard to read. I am on the train on my way to see you and no matter how I try I can't keep my hands from shaking. In just a few hours time I will get to see you and have you truly see me in return. I can't wait to have something new to replace the memory of sitting beside you while you looked on in bemused incomprehension, as though I were a total stranger. Oh Delia. I missed you so much. I'm not sure I will ever find words big enough to say how much (but I think you will know it anyway)._

 _But all that is almost over. I am sitting here in my brand new dress (a sleeveless, colourfully spotty number which is really more suited to summer but that I couldn't resist because it reminded me of you. I don't suppose you will even notice what I'm wearing today of all days, but it made me happy to put it on, as though you had been there to pick it out with me), gazing out of the window as the city slowly gives way to fields and trees and every rattle and bump of the train brings me closer to you. I feel almost as though I need to pinch myself to check that I am not simply in the midst of some glorious dream. Things have happened so fast since I got your last letter that I am almost in a daze; I hardly know where to begin. I know I don't really need to write anymore, but it has been my only means of talking to you for so long that now something so momentous is happening I feel driven to write to you about it.  
One last letter. _

_It has become a habit to collect the post myself on days when I am expecting your letter (not really a necessary one, but I find I like the little ritual of gathering up the mail from the mat and riffling through to find my name. Alone in the hall there is no need to carefully mask the little thrill of joy I feel when I spot the envelope with your familiar handwriting on the front), but since I had just received one and had not even started writing my reply yet, I had no thought of there being anything for me that day. I wouldn't have paid any attention at all when Sister Monica Joan brought in the stack of envelopes from the hall had she not been in one of her more expansive moods (believe me, they are not easy to ignore!). She paused beside Barbara to pass her a post card as if she were handing over a lost chapter of the bible itself and not a rather washed out picture of a boating lake in some formal garden. She clasped Barbara's hand (narrowly avoiding sloshing hot tea from the cup it was holding over both of them) and exclaimed effusively 'my dear! See what has come? The grace of God is great and miracles abound. All is well with our loved ones and they remember us in their kind words. Rejoice at this heaven sent day!'  
I asked Barbara later if there really had been anything momentous in the postcard, but she said there wasn't a thing, unless the fact that her aunt was finding Norwich 'very pleasant for the time of year' and said she hoped to visit London in the spring counted as news worthy of rejoicing.  
In contrast, Sister Monica Joan passed me your letter (a letter that truly _was _worthy of such a dramatic statement) without any comment at all. Instead, as I turned to take it from her, she reached across me and liberated half a fried tomato from my plate before she continued on around the table, sucking at the tomato noisily (but with an expression of such saintly virtue on her face that it felt almost impossible to accuse her of the theft). It hardly mattered anyway because the instant I saw your handwriting all thoughts of breakfast left me. I truly believe it took more self control not to run out of the room and read whatever had made you write this extra correspondence at once than it had done to wait the first time I received a letter after the accident._

 _But I did wait, of course. I tucked the letter away as casually as I could manage, and then I sat through a whole, agonizing fourteen minutes of forcing down what had up to then been an extremely appealing breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and (until it was purloined) fried tomato. Only when my plate was clean and set to dry on the draining board did I finally excuse myself to 'use the bathroom' ahead of morning rounds. I knew reading the letter when I had barely five minutes to myself was risky, but after all it was written in your own hand not your mother's, so nothing too terrible could have happened.  
And of course nothing had. I had to reread the whole thing twice before I could begin to take it in. It seemed at first almost too wonderful to be believed, but it's really true! You really do remember me, and more than that, you still feel for me as I do for you!_

 _Oh my darling, of_ course _I remember Brighton! It was one of those truly happy days that I treasure the recollection of. From time to time, when I need cheering up, I take down that memory from its storage shelf in my mind and allow its sunshine and laughter to warm me again as it did then.  
You made it sound almost as though I planned the whole thing in the 'House of Mysteries' but in all honesty I probably wouldn't have dared to keep hold of your hand for more than an extra heartbeat after I pulled you into that tent if it wasn't for your own, unthinking boldness. In the moment our palms touched you threaded your fingers through mine as naturally as if we had been holding hands for years and all of a sudden I wasn't simply guiding our direction anymore, I was actually holding you. After that I couldn't bring myself to be the one to let go, and it seemed you couldn't either. So we didn't. For all the complexity I had spun around the issue in my mind, when it came to it, it was as simple as that. _

_I never did admit this (even in later days when we eventually talked about the feelings that were blossoming between us), but I came so close to kissing you as we stood together in the artificial twilight of that marquee. You looked so beautiful - cheeks flushed with laughter, eyes alight with mischievous fun and your hand miraculously gripping mine with no apparent desire to let go, that I actually took an involuntary step towards you. It may seem a cliché, but my heart was pounding so hard I half expected you to notice and comment on it. I was so sure that this was the moment I would do something utterly reckless – dangerous in the extreme but so, so beautiful and I didn't feel afraid, I felt excited. In that instant I knew you wouldn't be horrified or push me away. If I kissed you, you would kiss me back._

 _Do you know what stopped me, in the end? What made me simply reach out instead and brush away a tendril of cobweb that had transferred from the tent flap to your shoulder, as if that had been my intention all along?  
Our lipstick didn't match. That was all. Not a sense of propriety, or shyness, or even fear of rejection. Merely a realization that if I pressed my ruby red lips to your rose petal pink ones it would leave a visible smudge of colour and even in that glorious, giddy moment I couldn't forget that our time alone in the tent was only a temporary reprieve from the real world._

 _The rest of the day was wonderful fun, but only of the sort that two good friends might have together on a day out in Brighton. I wondered whether the moment had passed forever now, whether I had missed my chance to kiss you once and for all, or if the opportunity might come again (and if it did, whether I would still feel so sure that it was what you wanted too).  
Then on the train home you nestled close against me, as though I (and not any place, be it a fairground tent or an impenetrable stone fortress) was your safe haven from the world, and I got to feel for the first time what it would be like to belong to someone in a way I hadn't believed would ever be possible for me. I felt such a rush of tenderness towards you when you snuggled into me and reached for my hand on the seat, and I knew then that the moment in the marquee was just the first of many. After that I couldn't resist pressing the unspent kiss that had been burning my lips throughout the day against your hair, like a secret promise._

 _I was so wrapped up in this memory as I poured over and over your words that I quite forgot about rounds. I was still sitting perched on the edge of the bath with the letter in my hands when Trixie came knocking.  
'I say Patsy, is everything alright? Sister Evangelina is getting a bit twitchy over your continued absence… listen; if you need me to tell her you've an upset stomach just say the word. I can cover your first patient. I dare say Barbara and I could manage them all between us if you aren't up to it. But do let me in Patsy; I want to make sure you're alright. Was the letter something awful?'_

 _Trixie's words broke the spell and I felt a grin starting to spill across my face, seemingly without the need of any input from my brain. I jumped up (actually jumped, like an excitable puppy) and opened the door, throwing my arms around Trixie with such uncharacteristic exuberance that she gave a little start of surprise._  
 _'Oh Trixie you absolute brick. Thank you, but nothing bad has happened. Quite the reverse. She remembers! She remembers who we are to each other, and she wants me to visit!'_  
 _As soon as she heard that she hugged me just as fiercely in return 'Patsy that's wonderful! Oh no wonder you're glowing. Look, you must tell me all about it – absolutely every detail. But if you really are alright I'm afraid it will have to wait until after rounds. When I came up to fetch you Sister Evangelina was threatening to give you an enema to help 'clear out the blockages' if you were much longer in the bathroom'._  
 _'Gracious, she'd do it too. Alright, I'll just put this letter somewhere safe and I'll be down. Do me a favour and tell her I was delayed by a stuck zip or a laddered stocking or something would you? Receiving an unnecessary enema would rather mar an otherwise lovely morning for me!'_

 _Up until then the whole conversation had taken place in a barely audible whisper, but neither of us could suppress our giggles as I hurried to the bedroom to store your letter safely and Trixie returned to mollify the waiting Sister Evangelina. Even her witheringly sarcastic greeting of 'nice of you to join us Nurse Butterfingers - may I take it that you now have your undergarments well and truly under control? Good. Perhaps then we might get back to the business of nursing, do you think?' was not enough to dampen my spirits in the least._

 _Although I did my best to remain perfectly professional throughout my morning's work, I found little smiles struggling to come to the surface even as I examined varicose veins and boiled urine samples and never before had I answered 'lovely day!' to the calls of 'mornin Nurse!' with such sincerity as I passed people on my bicycle. I was first to arrive back at lunch time (your news had given me such energy that I'd hardly noticed the miles slipping by as I cycled from one patient to another) and as soon as the autoclave was done and my instruments sterile and put away, I went immediately to Sister Julienne's office to see about taking some leave._

 _Sister Julienne gave me her usual warm smile as I entered; reminding me again how different life at Nonnatus House was to working in a hospital. If I had been approaching the Matron with a request for time off I would have been feeling nervous as a sparrow, holiday entitlement or no, but Sister Julienne was so kind it was impossible to fear her and my answering smile was a genuine one. I have felt the need to keep busy over the past months and have volunteered for rather a lot of extra duties, so when I brought up the question of a week's leave (or even just a couple of days, if they might be given soon) Sister Julienne looked delighted._

' _At last! The way you have been working these last few months I was almost sure you were going to run yourself into the ground. I'd have suggested you take some time off long before now, but it seemed the work was helping you with whatever inner journey you have been struggling with, so I let it rest. But now I am glad to hear that you are ready to take some time for yourself. Even those of our calling must remember that there is more to life than work Nurse Mount, and I agree that it is high time you had a holiday. We are lucky too in that it seems a slow month for the mothers-to-be of Poplar. As we are not too busy at the moment and there is no saying when that might change, it seems perfectly fitting that you should start your leave this Friday and take a whole week, if that suits you?'  
I was a little concerned that that would be _too _soon - there was no way a letter would reach you in time to give sufficient notice, and without a telephone the only way I could think of letting you know was by telegram. But after all, you had said as soon as possible, and after a brief hesitation my own impatience to see you got the better of me and I agreed happily, thinking to send a dispatch after lunch. In the end of course, a telegram wasn't necessary._

 _It was pure chance that I was the one to answer it when the phone rang during lunch. In fact, Sister Winifred was supposed to be on first call, but she had been delayed on a difficult case that morning and had barely managed a forkful of lunch when it began. I had had a reasonable amount to eat and was more than half expecting that the call would be from one of my patients anyway, so I offered to take it for her. I had been working with a particularly anxious lady who had just given birth to her first child (a completely normal, full term delivery of a healthy baby girl with no complications) and in the last week alone she had called four times with some imagined ailment of her little darling. Last time she had called in a panic over an odd sort of fit her daughter seemed to be having… it turned out the little one just had a bad case of hiccups. But instead of frantic questions about 'how long was too long' for a baby to sleep at a stretch or even the nervously excited voice of a soon-to-be father whose wife was in labour, my usual telephone greeting of 'Nonnatus House, midwife speaking' was met with a heartbeat's silence and then 'Pats? Patsy Mount, is that you?'_

 _It was so hard not to cry when I heard your gorgeous Welsh lilt, all unexpected, but the phone is in such a public place I had no choice but to hold myself together until I was alone. Looking back, I shouldn't have been surprised. Of_ course _it would only be a matter of time, once you remembered, before you found a phone box and called Nonnatus House. Writing a letter to tell me you had regained your memories was one thing, but how had I ever expected that you would wait patiently for days on end to receive a reply? Not if there was another option (after all, you are the girl who has to her name two thwarted but still beautifully romantic attempts to run away to London and find me). And sure enough there you were only hours after the letter was delivered, sounding so close you might have been about to rest your cheek on my shoulder as we spoke._

 _The Nonnatus phone is not really meant to be used for personal calls (there is always the chance that a patient in distress is trying to get through while the line is tied up) so we couldn't talk for long, but in the couple of minutes of (censored) conversation we allowed ourselves I told you about the week's leave Sister Julienne had given me, and we agreed that you shouldn't meet me at the station. I couldn't say aloud why not of course (any more than I could tell you how much I missed you, or how good it was to hear your voice again), but 'there will be so many people around, why don't we meet somewhere a little quieter? Save you facing the crush' seemed enough for you to understand the rest and you gave me directions to a spot outside the village where we might be alone. After all that has happened I don't think I would be able to maintain the proper level of detachment necessary to avoid the curious stares of other people on the platform, and I don't want to walk beside you out of the station (so close, but not able to take your hand or put an arm around you) and talk of small things until we get away. So instead, when I get off the train I will take the right hand fork in the road and follow it until I reach a stile into a meadow with a stream running through it. Then I will walk beside the stream for another mile, away from the village and its people, and find a weeping willow tree with a picnic blanket spread beneath its branches. That is to be our meeting place, a safe haven where we can allow ourselves the freedom to hold each other for as long as we like (I feel as though when I get to put my arms around you again I might never be able to let go) and even cry if we need to._

 _I'm not sure what we will do after that. I imagine it will involve tea and small talk with your mother for starters, but beyond that the week is ours to do with as we will. We talked about going to the seaside together, perhaps spending a few nights in a hotel there (a room with twin beds naturally, all very proper), but I don't know whether we will make it that far and honestly I don't much care if we spend the days we have on this holiday sleeping under a bush, as long as it is together._

 _I still don't have a record player, but the sound of the stream and the wind in the leaves and our own beating hearts will suffice. No matter what else we do or say, today I will take your hand, and we_ **will** _have our dance. A foxtrot maybe, or a waltz. Even a tango._

 _All my love,_

 _Patsy_

 _P.S. This time, I am not wearing lipstick._

* * *

 _AN: This is it - the last letter and the official end of Little Things Mean a Lot.  
_

 _ **BUT** this isn't all there is - at the request of people on tumblr, when I put this up the first time round I did write an epilogue about Patsy and Delia's meeting. If people are interested in reading it I can put it up here too, or we can just leave it here if you think it's better that way. Let me know what you'd prefer :)_

 _If we ARE saying goodbye here then thank you all for sticking with it all the way through, especially everyone who left such lovely, supportive comments! You all made me very happy :D x_


	26. Epilogue

AN: Sorry this breaks the style of the rest of the story - I did try writing it in letter format, but it just didn't work because as of the last chapter they don't _need_ the letters anymore, so it didn't feel right trying to write another (not after Patsy's 'one last letter'). So hopefully you won't mind it being like this :)

* * *

Until the moment she stepped off the train, Patsy had been keeping busy. First there had been the ticket to get, the case to pack, the patient notes to hand over and a hundred little jobs as distraction. There had been a paper bag of peppermint creams to buy as a gift for Delia (a reference to Delia's first attempt to come and find her in London), and the rattling journey to the train station in Fred's van, listening to him talk ninteen to the dozen about fool proof ways to keep slugs out of your garden, and the outrageous price of oysters in the market stalls that week. There had been bustling crowds and queues and porters to deal with. Of course, there had been hours on the train with nothing to do, but she had spent the time writing one last letter to the pre-accident Delia she had kept in her head all this time – a final act of catharsis to keep her from going mad with excitement and nerves.

She became so absorbed that when the conductor finally announced her station she almost missed it and had to scramble to pull her case down and leap clear of the train before the doors were slammed shut. And so it was a moment before it really hit her. She had arrived. This quaint little station with its empty hanging baskets awaiting summer flowers and its short, dusty platform. _This_ was her first glimpse of the place her Delia had grown up in. Patsy was distantly aware that her knees were trembling, and she was gripping her case so tightly that her knuckles were white with the effort but she didn't seem to be able to stop herself. All her concentration was already taken up with remembering how to draw oxygen into her lungs.

It wasn't until a young porter who looked barely past school age came over and laid a hand on her shoulder that she was able to snap back into her usual facade of competence. 'Exit's that way miss, just through that arch. Have you someone meeting you? Small town like this, we don't have taxis but it's only a short walk to the village proper, I'm sure I could find someone to take you if you needed?'  
Patsy noticed that his voice wavered up and down a bit, as though he were not quite done with puberty, and he was blushing a little as he gave his speech. Somehow these things helped her regain her composure and at last she managed to loosen her grip on the case as she turned on him with a smile

'Thank you, you are so kind Mr...?'

'Fovant Miss, Harold Fovant. Harry'

'Harry. It is frightfully good of you, but I shall be quite alright. I was actually looking around for a ladies. I don't suppose you might be able to oblige me?'

'Certainly miss! Just there, by the ticket office'.

'Oh yes, so it is. Thank you Mr Fovant. Please don't let me keep you, I dare say you're very busy'  
'Yes miss. A good day to you'.

Patsy left the blushing boy where he stood and nipped quickly into the ladies, out of sight of curious eyes. As soon as the bolt was drawn behind her she stood with her back to the door and took out Delia's last letter again. She had read it so often now that the paper was wearing thin at the folds, but the closer she got the more she needed to convince herself of what she would find when she finally arrived. Ever since the accident it had been too painful to hope for this moment. She had had to pretend that everything was alright and allowing a hope like this would have meant no going back, because if it hadn't worked out she would never be alright again. So she had wished for smaller things – a letter in return, a sign of recognition, a hint that Delia was not lost to her forever. Just enough to get her through one more week.

It was strange. She had been so eager for this – she _was_ so eager for it, and yet here she was, so close and yet unable to bring herself to leave this dank little toilet and take those final steps. Delia was probably already waiting for her. It was painful, physically painful to be away from Delia, especially now she was so close, but still she couldn't help holding back, afraid somehow that it would turn out to be a dream, or that she had misread something in Delia's abundantly clear letter which would mean she didn't get to have the happiness her heart was already swelling towards.

Nonsense. All this sentiment was the very antithesis of Nurse Mount and she certainly wasn't going to fall apart in a public convenience, not after all she had made it through to get this far. Taking a step towards the mirror, Patsy looked herself firmly in the eye and squared her shoulders 'come on old thing, no need for all this carrying on. One last big push and the tricky bit will be over. It will all be worth it a thousand times over when you see her face. Curtain up time Patience'. Somehow giving herself the sort of pep talk she would give an exhausted mother in the final stages of labour helped and Patsy was able to step back out into the pale sunlight without the slightest outward hint of the tension that had dogged her steps all day. She aimed a jaunty wave in the direction of Harold Fovant, who was watching her with the puppyish expression adopted by inexperienced boys faced with pretty girls everywhere and strode purposefully out of the station gates.

Part of her wished to linger – to take in every detail of the road and the houses as she passed them by, imagining a young Delia peering over that fence, or taking a running jump over that puddle on her way to school. But she couldn't dawdle. Now she had broken through her nervousness it was all she could do to keep walking at a brisk yet unremarkable pace on the road Delia had described to her (after all it wouldn't do to be seen running, some beneficent neighbour might see and take it as their duty to follow her in case she was in difficulty).

Delia had not been wrong when she said Pembrokeshire was beautiful. It had been a long time since Patsy had been out of London and longer still since she had spent any length of time in the countryside. The air tasted different here. Of course, most places smelled better than the East End of London, but Patsy fancied that this cool, clean scent clung to Delia even back in Poplar, and it made the place feel almost familiar. She wondered idly if the stream she was now following over fields and through a little wooded copse was the same one that ran behind Delia's mother's house, or whether there were lots of them around here. Her mind kept up a running commentary on the scenery ('those stones would be excellent skimmers. I do believe those are snowdrops! How lovely. Goodness it's getting a bit muddy, I shall have to watch my step. I shouldn't have worn these heels'), but it was just nervous background chatter - already most of her attention was taken up in scanning the horizon for the first glimpse of a weeping willow tree.

It felt much more than a mile. Patsy would almost swear she had been walking for hours, and yet when at last she rounded a hill and saw the promised spot she was caught off guard, as though she hadn't quite believed until that moment that she would ever reach her destination. But there it was. The tree with its dangling fronds reaching down towards the water. The checked picnic blanket spread beneath its boughs with a hamper and two glasses of lemonade already set out upon it. And a small, dark haired figure standing beside it, her hands in her coat pockets and her eyes darting anxiously back and forth, as though she were searching for something.

 _'Delia'_

The word felt like a shout but emerged from her lips as barely a whisper. Delia couldn't possibly have heard from this distance, and yet even as she said it their eyes locked and Patsy felt herself beginning to run. In a moment Delia was running too and Patsy let her case fall to the ground as her arms went up to pull Delia into an embrace. There had been too much space between them for too long, and now she couldn't bear so much as an inch of it. It was as though the distance separating them had been a physical pain that she had grown so used to she almost wasn't aware of it until it stopped, and the relief of it made her feel light and giddy.

Delia snuggled close against her, her hands tightly gripping the back of Patsy's coat and her forehead automatically fitting itself to the curve of her neck – the spot she always secretly felt had been designed just for the purpose. For a long time neither of them moved, they just held each other while the ragged breathes that couldn't entirely be explained by the short sprint returned to something approaching normal and the solid, physical reality of the other helped each girl believe that they weren't dreaming after all. Eventually Delia made to pull away and Patsy had to resist the urge to cling to her, because it felt as though to let go of Delia now would tear half her heart away too. But she had trained herself well over the years and she loosened her grip after only the smallest hesitation. Delia took a half step back. Just enough to allow her to gaze properly into Patsy's face, but not so much as to break contact altogether. Slowly, almost shyly, she reached a hand up to stroke Patsy's cheek. As her fingers made contact she let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding

'I knew it. I just... all along, I think I knew it. Do you remember... it was the very first letter I wrote to you, or maybe the second. It seems so long ago. Anyway, I told you then that my hands remembered things the rest of me didn't. I used to lie in bed and run my fingers down my cheek just like this because it felt so familiar and comforting against the back of my hand, but I couldn't think why. Now I know. This is why. Your cheek. I'd know the feel of it anywhere. Oh Pats, it really is true isn't it? You really were mine?'

'No Delia, I really _AM_ yours. No past tense. Present and future. I am yours. Oh Deels. I can't begin to say how much...I know we have a lot to talk about. I know that maybe things are a bit different for you now and maybe there are things we'll have to work out. I know I can't just expect it all to be as it was right away. You've been through so much. But just for now. Just for this moment could you... Will you...'

'Pats? Patsy you're shaking. Sweetheart, what is it? What's wrong?'

Patsy gave a little laugh that was almost a sob 'Sorry, sorry. Nothing's wrong. Truly it isn't. I just wanted to say... to ask... Will you just dance with me Delia? I know there's no music and the ground's rather uneven, but I feel like I've been waiting for this moment for so long I might die if I have to wait another minute. Please?'.

'Oh Pats. I thought you'd never ask'.

Their waltz was rather slower and they kept rather closer together than would strictly be considered proper as they moved around the tree, but who was there to comment? Besides, neither one wanted to move too far apart. Patsy couldn't help remembering the night she had tried to teach Tom to dance. That had been a waltz too, and yet it had been so different. Granted, Fred had been there, and she was teaching Trixie's boyfriend to dance as a favour rather than choosing her own partner, but still... Fred's words came back to her as she gave Delia a little twirl before pulling her back into her arms. 'The waltz is all about protection. It's a dance that says, "I have you in my arms, my dear. All is well with the world". It's also about trying not to tread on the lady's toes!'

Patsy surprised herself by laughing aloud at the memory.

'Are you laughing or crying? I didn't think I was as bad a dancer as all that!'

'Laughing, but not at you! You're not a bad dancer, you're perfect. It's just... well, we're really here. You and me, after all this time. And you haven't stepped on my toes once. At the time I thought it was just Fred's usual babble, but I'm beginning to see what he meant. About the waltz that is, I had more than enough bruises to attest to the bit about stepping on the lady's toes'.

'Sorry Pats, I think that might be a memory I don't have yet, I've not a clue what you're talking about'.  
Patsy shook her head 'you weren't there, I just wished you were. I was dancing with Tom'.

'Tom? _Trixie's_ Tom? Whatever were you dancing with him for?'

'Oh Deels, you sound just like Trixie! Fred and I were teaching Tom to dance, so that he'd be able to take Trixie out of an evening. I was glad to help of course, but I can't tell you how jealous I was waving them off when not knowing the steps was the least of _our_ obstacles. Now I think dancing in a hall to real live music couldn't possibly have been as wonderful as waltzing round a tree to the sound of a stream with you. I've missed you Delia. So much'.

'I missed you too Pats'.

Somehow, without really meaning to they had stopped dancing and were just staring at each other. Patsy's heart was beating almost painfully hard against her ribs, but she remembered the promise she had made herself to be the brave one, the one who reached out first. Very slowly, so that Delia would have ample time to turn her head or pull away if she wanted to, Patsy leaned in towards her. There lips met in a kiss that was infinitely gentle, like the touch of a butterfly's wing. She felt more than heard it when Delia whispered a single syllable against her lips.

' _Pats_ '.

She made to pull back, to see if the word had been a request for her to stop, but Delia's hands came up around her neck and pulled her back into the kiss, deepening it into something that dispelled the last lingering doubts that the cautious part of her brain had been clinging to.

'Marry me'.

She hadn't meant to say it. Not yet anyway. She had meant to give Delia time to get to know her again, to grow used to the idea of a hidden relationship and decide whether it was truly what she wanted.

No, she hadn't meant to say it. But she did mean it.

'But Pats, we can't-'

'I know darling. I know we can never walk down a church aisle, or get a legal certificate, or even wear the rings that would proclaim it to the rest of the world. But when you were hurt I realized that what matters most to me is you. I love my job and I adore my family at Nonnatus, but when I thought I'd lost you none of that meant anything any more. Whereas there is nothing on Earth that I could lose that would make _you_ mean any less to me. I'm not saying we should give up everything, I know that as long as the world is hostile to love like ours we can never live openly, it will always be a secret. I wish it didn't have to be. But I want to be the one you come home to. I want to still be the one you're coming home to when you're sixty. I want to grow old with you and see you every day on the way there. I want us to be married for each other, even if not for anyone else. I know I can't offer you everything you could find in marriage to a man, though goodness knows I wish I could. But all I have to offer is yours, if you want it. I love you Delia Busby'.

There were tears rolling down Delia's cheeks, but she didn't seem to have noticed.

'Oh sweetheart, don't you know it yet? I don't _want_ everything. I want you. Of course I'll marry you. I love you Patience Elizabeth Mount'.


End file.
